$200bn in aid after Katrina

2005-09-15 23:09

New Orleans - Faced with the costliest United States natural disaster, President George W Bush assembled an unprecedented package on Thursday of housing, health care, job assistance and education for hundreds of thousands of Gulf Coast residents thrown into misery by Hurricane Katrina.

Trying to make up for a flawed response to the hurricane that embarrassed his administration, Bush was to announce a recovery plan in a nationally broadcast speech from Jackson Square in the heart of the French Quarter.

Elsewhere in the famed city, workers were still pumping out flooded neighbourhoods and collecting bodies left behind in the frantic evacuation.

Bush was not expected to put a pricetag on the disaster, but costs are certain to climb to $200bn (about R1 280bn) or beyond in the near term.

The final tab could approach the more than $300bn spent so far on US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress has already approved $62bn for the disaster, but that is expected to run out next month.

Back in business soon

Meanwhile, in the city itself, business owners and residents will be allowed back into parts of devastated New Orleans from Saturday, mayor Ray Nagin said, expressing confidence that the city will "start to breathe again".

Nagin said business owners could enter the city on Saturday and Sunday and about 180 000 residents would start returning from Monday in a phased operation because of the extent of the destruction.

"The city of New Orleans, starting this weekend, will start to breathe again," Nagin said.

"We will have life. We will have commerce. We will have people getting back into their normal modes of operation."

'We're bringing New Orleans back'

Authorities would concentrate on the famed French Quarter and central districts as they bid to reopen the city. But anyone returning would have to provide proof they own a business or home in specific parts of New Orleans and would be subject to a dusk-to-dawn curfew.

Nagin said hospitals and special food shops would be opened and he was confident power and water supplies would come back though he warned that in many places the water should not be drunk or used for washing.

The number of people in emergency shelters across the US has fallen some 30 000 in four days to 111 000, authorities said.

The army said it hoped to complete the operation to empty flood water from the streets by October 2, well ahead of the original schedule.

"It's a good day in New Orleans," the mayor declared in an upbeat mood. "The sun is shining. We're bringing New Orleans back."

Bush was to head back to the region for the fourth time since the storm, as his popularity plumbed new lows, to make a prime time speech to spell out long-term plans for rebuilding the disaster zone across Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Katrina has further damaged the US president's standing, already hit by the Iraq war.

Death toll zooms past 700

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released on Thursday showed just 40% of those interviewed approved of his overall performance as president, a record low since he took office in January 2001.

Nearly 60% of those polled said they were unhappy with the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina.

The disaster's death toll zoomed past the 700 mark on Wednesday, with the discovery of another 51 corpses in Louisiana, where 474 were killed. Another 218 deaths have been recorded in Mississippi, two in Alabama and 14 in Florida.

Nagin warned on Wednesday that more hideous discoveries would come out of the search of abandoned houses as the flood waters receded.

About 485 000 people fled before or after Katrina battered the city and floodwaters then devastated much of the jazz capital.

Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti has pressed negligent homicide charges against two owners of a New Orleans nursing home, where the bodies of 34 people were found.

While New Orleans made faltering steps toward recovery, Hurricane Ophelia, the seventh of the hurricane season, inflicted floods and power cuts on about 100 000 people in North Carolina on the Atlantic coast.

North Carolina Governor Mike Easley pleaded with the public to heed evacuation warnings, and ordered a state of emergency with dawn to dusk curfews in some towns.

Authorities poured emergency workers into North Carolina after vitriolic criticism for their slow response to Katrina.

The federal emergency management agency (Fema) had about 250 specialist workers in the state already, Easley said.

- News24