Hide and seek in New Orleans storm effort

By Michael Christie and Mark Egan

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – National Guard troops prepared to
hunt on Thursday for thousands of people believed still in
ruined New Orleans, as the White House sent a new wave of top
officials into areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina.

The New Orleans stragglers were but a fraction of the
million people displaced by the August 29 storm in Louisiana,
Mississippi and Alabama. Their fate in what was once one of
Americas’s favorite party cities was playing out in the
spotlight.

Eddie Compass, the New Orleans police chief, said there
were still thousands “wanting to leave” and waiting for help.

But some were staying in defiance of Mayor Ray Nagin’s
mandatory evacuation order. “Those that don’t want us to find
them, they hide,” said Gregg Brown, a South Carolina game
warden helping in the search.

Robert Johnson, 58, said he had no money and nowhere to go,
and wanted to stay to protect his home.

Officials have said perhaps 10,000 people remain in the
below-sea level city where water and electricity were cut off
after levee breaks flooded most of what had been home to
450,000 residents.

With a national recovery effort that may cost taxpayers
$150 billion and a death toll that may rise into the thousands,
there was unrelenting criticism of the U.S. government’s
response to the disaster.

President George W. Bush ordered more tours of the region
by top aides, including Vice President Dick Cheney, who was due
on Thursday in hard-hit Mississippi as well as New Orleans.

In addition, the administration said Treasury Secretary
John Snow, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez, Labor Secretary
Elaine Chao and Social Security Commissioner Jo Anne Barnhart
would travel to Houston, Louisiana, and Alabama on Thursday and
Friday. They were to see relief facilities and get first-hand
accounts about damage and recovery efforts.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, scorched by
criticism of its performance, was handing out $2,000 debit
cards to thousands of survivors. At the Houston Astrodome where
16,000 New Orleans evacuees are being housed, long lines formed
for the money.

“INSTITUTIONAL FAILURE”

Criticism of the speed and scope of the government’s
response came from members of both political parties and the
private sector.

The situation “amounts to a massive institutional failure,”
said Raymond Offenheiser, president of the Oxfam America
affiliate of the international relief agency. Oxfam mounted in
Mississippi the first domestic U.S. rescue in its 35-year
history.

“Before Katrina, we reserved our emergency response for
countries that lack the resources of the United States. If
we’ve got this kind of failure at home, how can we expect poor
countries to do better?” he asked.

A Canadian search-and-rescue team had made it to the
flooded New Orleans suburb of St. Bernard Parish five days
before the U.S. military, Louisiana state Sen. Walter Boasso
said. “We’ve got Canadian flags flying everywhere,” he said.

Bush’s family also came in for criticism. A comment made
earlier in the week by his mother, Barbara Bush, was slammed on
Internet sites and newspaper pages.

Speaking of evacuees in the Astrodome, the former first
lady told a reporter in Houston: “What I’m hearing, which is
sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is
so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in
the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway. This is
working very well for them.”

White House spokesman Scott McClellan described her
comments as “a personal observation.”

CONGRESSIONAL PROBE

Leaders of Bush’s Republican party said there would be a
joint congressional investigation into the government’s
hurricane response, to the disappointment of minority Democrats
who said probe should be turned over to an outside independent
commission. Bush has also said he would lead a probe.

Bush’s response to the crisis was rated “bad” or “terrible”
by 42 percent of Americans surveyed for a CNN/USA Today Gallup
poll released on Wednesday, compared with 35 percent who said
it was “good” or “great.”

Federal health officials said three people in the region
had died from bacterial infections — one of them an evacuee
from Louisiana who died in Texas. They said tests had confirmed
the floodwater in New Orleans was a witch’s brew of
sewage-borne bacteria.

Pumps gradually pumped the bacteria and chemical-laced oily
water out of the city, but far more were out of commission than
working.

The Congressional Budget Office said 400,000 jobs could be
lost and the nation’s economic growth slashed by up to 1
percentage point by the disaster.

The White House was preparing a new emergency budget
request likely to total $40 billion to $50 billion for the
recovery, in addition to $10.5 billion approved by Congress
last week.

Some in the U.S. Congress estimate that federal spending
will ultimately total upward of $150 billion.

Early estimates place the rebuilding cost for roads and
bridges in Louisiana and Mississippi at nearly $2.5 billion,
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said.

(Additional reporting by Paul Simao in New Orleans, Jim
Loney in Baton Rouge, Adam Entous, Adam Tanner in Houston and
Maggie Fox in Washington)