NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana, 16 September 2005 — President George W. Bush headed back to storm-wracked New Orleans yesterday as his popularity plumbed new lows and the death toll from Hurricane Katrina rose further.
The US president is facing an uphill task to restore his standing, which was sagging before Katrina hit but slid dramatically as the public judged the government response to helping the storm victims.
A Wall Street Journal NBC News poll released yesterday showed that just 40 percent of those interviewed approved of his overall performance as president, a record low since he took office in Jan. 2001.
Nearly 60 percent of those polled said they were unhappy with the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
The disaster’s death toll zoomed past the 700 mark on Wednesday, with the discovery of another 51 corpses in Louisiana, where 474 were killed. Another 218 deaths have been recorded in Mississippi, two in Alabama and 14 in Florida.
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin warned in a television interview that more hideous discoveries will come out of the search of abandoned houses.
But on a more optimistic note, Nagin said businesses will be allowed to return to parts of New Orleans from tomorrow.
Nagin said other residents would start coming back from Monday and that more than 180,000 people will return in phases over the following 10 days.
“The city of New Orleans, starting this weekend, will start to breathe again,” Nagin told a press conference yesterday.
“We will have life. We will have commerce. We will have people getting back into their normal modes of operation.” Authorities would concentrate on the famed French Quarter and central districts. Owners of businesses in the French Quarter, the Algiers, Central and Uptown districts will be allowed into the city on Saturday and Sunday but will be subject to a dusk-to-dawn curfew, Nagin said.
Residents of the Algiers district will be the first to return to inspect their homes on Monday. Other districts will be opened up on Wednesday and Friday. Inhabitants of the French Quarter can return from Sept. 26.
Nagin said extra checks on the electricity supply were needed in the French Quarter because the buildings are so old. He also said efforts to restore water supplies were progressing faster than expected.
“It’s a good day in New Orleans. The sun is shining. We’re bringing New Orleans back,” he said.
Some 485,000 people fled before or after Katrina battered the city and floodwaters then devastated much of the jazz capital.
Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti has pressed negligent homicide charges against two owners of a New Orleans nursing home, where the bodies of 34 people were found.
Another grim find was made on Sunday at a New Orleans hopsital, where 45 corpses were discovered.
While New Orleans made faltering steps toward recovery, Hurricane Ophelia, the seventh of the hurricane season, inflicted floods and power cuts on about 100,000 people in North Carolina on the Atlantic coast.
North Carolina Governor Mike Easley pleaded with the public to heed evacuation warnings, and ordered a state of emergency with dawn to dusk curfews in some towns.
Authorities poured emergency workers into North Carolina following vitriolic criticism for their slow response to Katrina.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had about 250 specialist workers in the state already, Easley said. The Department of Homeland Security also said that several hundred trailers loaded with water and ice and dozens of trailers with emergency meals had been pre-positioned in several states around North Carolina.
