New Orleans residents return but city still hurting

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – Residents of some hard-hit New
Orleans’ neighborhoods returned home for the first time on
Wednesday, but many came only to salvage what they could from
wrecked houses, without power or drinking water.

Most police and military roadblocks and checkpoints had
been removed to allow thousands to visit, although the city’s
worst-hit area, the mostly poor and black Ninth Ward, was still
partly flooded and off limits.

Moving trucks and piles of ruined furniture, appliances and
garbage dotted the newly reopened Lakeview area as residents
cleaned out mold-caked homes.

“We’re trying to salvage as much of our furniture as
possible,” said Rick Dolese, 56, as he showed off destroyed
19th-century armoires and other antiques in his house, which
had been flooded with 8 feet of water.

Troops patrolling the city, devastated after Hurricane
Katrina struck on August 29, killing hundreds of people, said
activity had picked up.

“It really surprises me in some of the areas because houses
are destroyed and unlivable, but there are still people coming
in trying to live it out,” said Zach Bokum, 21, of the Illinois
National Guard.

In the latest sign that parts of New Orleans are simply
beyond repair, officials announced that the city’s Charity and
University Hospitals were unsalvageable and would be closed.

“The … Charity and University Hospital buildings were
issued their ‘death warrant’ by Katrina and the cataclysmic
floods it spawned,” said Donald Smithburg, chief executive of
Louisiana State University’s Health Care Services Division.

“Even before the storms, these old facilities were on the
ropes,” he added in a statement.

Charity Hospital, which was built in the 1930s, became a
focal point for concern about Katrina’s victims as it struggled
to evacuate patients during the chaos after the hurricane.

Eighty percent of low-lying New Orleans was flooded after
the storm surge from Katrina broke through levees. Hurricane
Rita, which struck the Louisiana-Texas border on September 24,
caused more flooding, which persists in some areas.

PATCHING UP FLOOD WALLS

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which is working to build
up sand-and-rock flood wall repairs to 10 feet, said the city’s
pumping system was working at 60 percent capacity and that the
walls would be back to pre-Katrina heights of 14 feet by June
2006.

“Given that these are temporary closures and not a
permanent solution, we need to be very, very vigilant to a
storm and to its possible effects,” Corps spokesman Mitch
Frazier said.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin initially sought to bring tens
of thousands of people back two weeks after Katrina hit. But
after a firestorm of criticism for possibly putting citizens in
jeopardy, he scrapped the plan before Hurricane Rita.

To help hundreds of thousands of displaced people from the
Gulf Coast, the U.S. Justice Department eased the toughest part
of a new bankruptcy law for hurricane victims. The stricter
bankruptcy law, which makes it harder for heavily indebted
Americans to wipe out their obligations, is effective October
17.

The department told its field staff that natural disasters
like Katrina will qualify as “special circumstances” that allow
people to eliminate debts instead of repaying part of them.

More than 230,000 unemployment insurance claims — 16 times
the normal volume — have been processed by the Louisiana
Department of Labor since Katrina struck, state Labor Secretary
John Warner Smith said.

He estimated it will take $1 billion to provide the
insurance through August 2006, but said in a news conference
the state has a $1.5 billion fund to cover unemployment
compensation.

(Additional reporting by Hilary Burke in New Orleans, Ned
Randolph in Baton Rouge and the Washington newsroom)