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Katrina: Evacuees welcomed back
29/09/2005 11:24 - (SA)
Laurent Thomet
New Orleans - New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin launched a plan on Wednesday to repopulate his hurricane-wrecked city by next week, as hundreds of thousands remained homeless along the Gulf of Mexico.
"Come in, inspect your property, if you want to stay, you're free to stay," Nagin said. "We're also allowing people to come in to look and leave, and those areas will be the areas that are flooded."
He had earlier invited residents back to the city's least-flooded neighbourhoods, a first step in repopulating the city. But on Wednesday he urged those returning to devastated homes to leave after checking their property.
If the first phase goes well, he said, residents in the rest of the city, except the twice-flooded Lower Ninth Ward, will be allowed back home on October 5, more than one month after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast.
Fresh flooding, death toll climbing
Nagin wanted to start repopulating his city last week, but was forced to suspend his programme as Hurricane Rita swirled across the Gulf of Mexico.
That storm largely spared the city, except the impoverished Lower Ninth Ward which suffered fresh flooding on Saturday.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans along the Gulf of Mexico coast remain homeless in the wake of the two huge storms, as United States leaders continue to spar over the government's response to the disaster.
The Katrina death toll rose to 1 132 Wednesday as 11 more fatalities were confirmed in Louisiana, authorities said. There are 10 confirmed deaths from Rita.
Rescuers in helicopters and boats continued to patrol for victims throughout the flooded lowlands and devastated communities.
Rita failed to deliver a catastrophe on the scale of the first storm but it has fed the criticism of US authorities' response to natural disasters.
Hundreds of thousands of evacuees were stranded on clogged highways when the hurricane hit, while others found themselves marooned in the disaster zone with little assistance.
More destruction and suffering
Meanwhile in Washington, Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco pleaded with US legislators in a congressional hearing to speed up aid for her state, which has suffered devastating damage from two hurricanes in less than a month.
But Blanco would not be drawn into a controversy that erupted when the former top federal disaster official, Michael Brown, accused her of botching the response to Katrina.
Separately, Gary LaGrange, president and chief executive of The Port of New Orleans, told the senate finance committee it would take "months if not years to fully recover" from the storms.
The Port, a key to US maritime operations, is operating at just 20% capacity and needs repairs costing some $1.7bn, LaGrange said.
The double blows of hurricanes Katrina and Rita will likely shave up to one percentage point off US third-quarter economic growth, but not cause a recession, a senior White House advisor said.
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