Bush to announce new help for hurricane region

By Kieran Murray and Maggie Fox

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – As U.S. President George W. Bush
prepared to unveil plans on Thursday to revive areas ravaged by
Hurricane Katrina, the mayor of New Orleans said his own
initiative could return 180,000 people to the city within two
weeks.

Bush, his approval ratings at a low amid criticism of the
government’s response to the August 29 storm, was to address
the nation from New Orleans at 9:02 p.m. EDT (0102 GMT on
Friday) following stops in Mississippi, which also suffered
widespread damage.

The speech “will be an opportunity for the president to
update the American people about the latest developments of our
recovery and talk about the way forward as we begin
rebuilding,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

He added that Bush, who has visited the U.S. Gulf Coast
area three times since the storm, will unveil some “new
initiatives” but did not elaborate.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, whose city of 450,000 was all
but turned into a ghost town after levee breaks flooded most of
it, said he would introduce measures of his own on Thursday.

“I’m going to announce a phased repopulation plan that is
going to deal with some of the areas that were least hit by the
hurricane and had less water, and then within the next week or
two we should have about 180,000 people back in the city of New
Orleans,” Nagin told CNN.

Earlier Nagin singled out the historic French Quarter,
which is above sea level and did not suffer flood damage, as
well as the central business district and two other
neighborhoods as likely candidates for early resettlement.

Parts of New Orleans are still under water. In poor
neighborhoods, lightly built structures in a region that rarely
sees freezing weather were lifted off their foundations by the
water and collapsed. Many appeared beyond repair.

DEAD STILL BEING FOUND

Nor was the task of recovering all of the dead in New
Orleans complete, though the count is far lower than some
earlier projections.

The death toll stood at 711 with 474 in Louisiana, 218 in
Mississippi and another 19 deaths in Florida, Alabama, Georgia
and Tennessee.

But recovery was spreading across the region.

Officials in Jefferson Parish, which curls around New
Orleans from the west to the south, said two more towns, Kenner
and Harahan, would open to residents on Thursday.

Officials in hard-hit St. Bernard Parish east of the city
said business owners there could return on Thursday to check on
their properties.

In Mississippi officials said they were receiving far more
donations of used clothing from around the country than they
will ever be able to use.

The more than 1,000 people still housed in shelters near
Gulfport have a greater need for items such as canned food,
personal hygiene items, detergent, bleach and cleaning
supplies, they said.

Residents returning to some Louisiana towns on Wednesday
for the first time since the storm struck were either
devastated or relieved.

In Lafitte, a quiet fishing town where a summer seafood
festival is the highlight of the social year, some homes were
untouched and others piles of rubble.

“It was real hit-and-miss,” said Lester Cipriano, whose
home suffered minor damage. A shattered mobile home nearby had
lost its roof, with torn insulation covering the floor.

New Orleans was still technically under a mandatory
evacuation order, but some residents were sneaking back to
reclaim houses that escaped heavy damage.

In the Garden District near downtown, where many gracious
homes were spared, some people had returned.

“It’s better here than in a hotel,” said David, who did not
give his last name. He got past a security checkpoint through
his girlfriend, who has a medical ID, and they moved back into
their wood-frame house, relying on bottled water and
flashlights.

NURSING HOME TRAGEDY

In Washington Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican,
asked the U.S. Justice Department and the federal Department of
Health and Human Services to launch investigations into the
deaths of 34 patients who apparently drowned when floodwaters
engulfed a nursing home for the elderly near New Orleans.

He said there were reports that 28 other patients may have
died before they could be rescued from two nursing homes inside
New Orleans.

Louisiana officials have filed criminal charges against the
owners of St. Rita’s home in St. Bernard Parish, charging that
34 elderly and disabled patients were allowed to drown. A
lawyer a representing the couple who own the facility said they
had behaved responsibly.

Traces of the tragedy inside that home were still visible.

Beds were overturned and wheelchairs were stacked up near
windows, perhaps indicating desperate attempts to escape by
those who died.

Water marks indicated the rooms were flooded to within 1
foot (.34 meter) of the ceiling. The names of patients were
still on the doors, pictures of them on walls and stuffed
animals and other belongings mired in mud on the floor.

Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti said the owners had
turned down an offer from local officials to take the patients
out by bus and did not bother to call in an ambulance service
with which they had a contract. Their lawyer said some of the
patients were far too frail to have been moved and would have
died had that been attempted.

The storm will likely be the costliest natural disaster in
U.S. history, with damage estimates ranging from $100 billion
to $200 billion.

(Additional reporting by Ben Berkowitz and Matt Daily in
Baton Rouge,, Joanne Kenen and Caren Bohan in Washington and
Carey Gillam in Gulfport)