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New Orleans residents return but city still hurting

Posted on: Wednesday, 5 October 2005, 19:47 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

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