NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans' mayor has the authority to let residents
return to his hurricane-damaged city, but the Coast Guard official in
charge of the federal disaster response said Sunday that all the
information from health and environmental experts recommends against it.
PAUL SANCYA / AP
Flood waters from Hurricane Katrina remain in a New Orleans’
residential neighborhood on Sunday.
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Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen plans to meet with Mayor Ray Nagin on
Monday and develop what he called a logical plan to repopulate the city.
If Allen gets his way, that repopulation won't start on Monday, as the
mayor planned, but it will be soon.
"I wouldn't want to attach a time limit to it, but it includes things
like making sure there's potable water, making sure there's a 911 system
in place, telephone, a means to notify people there is an approaching
storm so you can evacuate it with the weakened levee situation," Allen
said on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday.
"We can do that, and we can do that fairly soon, but it's very, very
soon to try and do that this week," he said.
Nagin didn't appear ready to back down Saturday as he defended his plan
to return up to 180,000 people to the city within a week and a half
despite concerns about the short supply of drinking water and heavily
polluted floodwaters.
"We must offer the people of New Orleans every chance for a sense of
closure and the opportunity for a new beginning," he said.
He wants the Algiers, Garden District and French Quarter sections to
reopen over the next week and a half, bringing back more than one-third
of the city's half-million inhabitants, though city officials have
backed off a specific date for reopening the famous French Quarter. The
areas were spared the worst of Hurricane Katrina's flooding.
Nagin said his plan was developed in cooperation with the federal
government and balances safety concerns and the needs of citizens to
begin rebuilding.
But Allen said he had spoken personally with the administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency and the director for the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention and returning now wouldn't be advised. A
prime public health concern is the tap water, which in most of the city
remains unfit for drinking and bathing, he said.
"We really support his plan to restart New Orleans," Allen said. "We are
right in sticking with his vision. It's a matter of timing and creating
the, enabling the structures that will allow us to do this safely."
Those structures would include an evacuation plan if another storm hits
the region and threatens an already delicate levee system, he said.
There are also still bodies to be recovered. Allen said over 90 percent
of the primary house-to-house sweep was complete, but some homes are
still under water and searchers will have to return.
On Sunday, the death toll in Louisiana increased by more than 60 to 646,
according to the state Department of Health and Hospitals. That raised
the total Gulf Coast deaths linked to the hurricane to 883.
Despite floodwater remaining in some areas and a lack of residents in
the city, business owners were allowed back in to some sections of the
city to begin the long process of cleaning up and rebuilding, part of
Nagin's plan to begin reviving the city by resuming a limited amount of
commerce.
But confronted with damage that could take months to repair, many said
hopes for a quick recovery may be little more than a political dream.
"I don't know why they said people could come back and open their
businesses," said Margaret Richmond, owner of an antiques shop on the
edge of the city's upscale Garden District that was looted. "You can't
reopen this. And even if you could, there are no customers here."
The Wal-Mart store in uptown New Orleans, built within the last year,
survived the storm but was destroyed by looters.
"They took everything - all the electronics, the food, the bikes," said
John Stonaker, a Wal-Mart security officer. "The only thing left are the
country-and-western CDs."
If the store had not been looted, it could be open in two weeks,
Stonaker said. Now he doubts it will be open by January.
In the French Quarter, the hum of generators, the thumping of hammers
and the whir of power tools cut through the air Saturday as business
owners were allowed in to survey the damage and begin cleaning up. Some
threw an impromptu street party, complete with a traditional feast of
red beans and rice.
At the famous French Quarter restaurant, The Court of Two Sisters,
director of food and beverages Andrew Orth was removing plywood from the
windows on Saturday morning. The coolers lost power and the food was
rotting. Orth estimated it would take several weeks to get the
restaurant ready to serve diners again.
"We couldn't open even if the electricity was on," he said.
Associated Press Writer Doug Simpson contributed to this report from
Baton Rouge.
