Mayor announces plan to reopen New Orleans (AP) Updated: 2005-09-16 20:45 "My gut feeling right now is that we'll settle in at 250,000 people over the
next three to six months, and then we'll start to ramp up over time to the
half-million we had before, and maybe exceed" that, he said. "I imagine building
a city so original, so unique that everybody's going to want to come."
Nagin asked mayors across the country to start counting displaced New
Orleanians so the city knows where they are and can communicate with them about
reconstruction.
However, a poll in Friday's Washington Post found that fewer than half of all
hurricane survivors from New Orleans who evacuated to Houston shelters plan to
return home, while two-thirds of those who want to move somewhere new expect to
settle permanently in the Houston area.
Across five Gulf Coast states, the death toll from Katrina climbed Thursday
to 794, led by 558 in Louisiana.
Despite the good news from the mayor, large sections of New Orleans remained
accessible only by boat, and corpses could still be seen out in the open. In
flooded streets near the University of New Orleans' campus, two bodies were seen
floating face down, and the decomposed corpse of a woman was sprawled on a
church step, her cane lying beside her.
The Army Corps of Engineers said it is getting water pumped out of eastern
New Orleans and nearby parishes faster than expected, and most of the area
should be dry by the end of this month, about a week earlier than previously
estimated.
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