New Orleans suspends reopening of city
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-20 10:26

Under pressure from US President Bush and other top federal officials, the New Orleans mayor suspended the reopening of large portions of the city Monday and instead ordered nearly everyone out because of the risk of a new round of flooding from a tropical storm on the way, AP reported.

"If we are off, I'd rather err on the side of conservatism to make sure we have everyone out," Mayor Ray Nagin said.

The announcement came after repeated warnings from top federal officials — and the president himself — that New Orleans was not safe enough to reopen. Among other things, federal officials warned that Tropical Storm Rita could breach the city's temporarily patched-up levees and swamp the city all over again.

The official death toll from Hurricane Katrina reached 973 across the Gulf Coast, with the number in Louisiana alone rising by 90 to 736.

The mayor reversed course even as residents began trickling back to the first neighborhood opened as part of his plan, the less damaged Algiers section.

Nagin wanted to reopen some of the city's signature neighborhoods over the coming week to reassure the people of New Orleans that "there was a city to come back to."

But "now we have conditions that have changed. We have another hurricane that is approaching us," Nagin said. He warned that the city's pumping system was not yet running at full capacity and that the levees were still in a "very weak position."

John Mioc searches for his commercial fishing boat in the Empire, La., harbor Monday, Sept. 19, 2005. Many commercial fishing boats sustained damage by Hurricane Katrina nearly three weeks ago.[AP]

Nagin also urged everyone already settled back into Algiers to be ready to evacuate as early as Wednesday. The city requested 200 buses to help if necessary.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, in a televised address Monday, also urged residents of coastal southwest Louisiana to be prepared to leave. More evacuees would strain the shelters in Texas, she said, so she urged people to head for central and northern Louisiana instead.

"We will pray that Rita will not devastate Louisiana, but today we do not know the answer to that question," Blanco said.

Tropical Storm Rita was headed toward the Florida Keys and was expected to become a hurricane, cross the Gulf of Mexico and reach Texas or Mexico by the weekend. But forecasters said it could veer toward Louisiana and New Orleans' weakened levees.

"We're watching Tropical Storm Rita's projected path and, depending on its strength and how much rain falls, everything could change," said Col. Duane Gapinski, of the Army Corps of Engineers task force draining New Orleans and repairing levees.

The dispute over the mayor's plan to quickly reopen New Orleans and bring back about 180,000 of the city's half-million inhabitants was just the latest example of the lack of federal-local coordination that has marked the disaster almost from the start.

Nagin saw a quick reopening as a way to get the storm-battered city back in the business of luring tourists. But federal officials warned it would be premature, pointing out much of the area does not yet have full electricity, drinkable water, 911 service or working hospitals.

Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, who heads the federal recovery effort in the region, went on one news show after another over the weekend to warn that city services may not be able to handle an influx of people.

Allen said repeatedly that he intended to have a frank discussion with Nagin about his concerns on Monday, but the two didn't meet until after Nagin held a news conference to announce he was suspending re-entry to the city, a mayor's spokeswoman said.

Nagin had spent the weekend in Dallas, where he moved his family and has enrolled his daughter in school, and he missed an appointment with Allen because his flight home was delayed, she said.

Earlier, a clearly agitated Nagin had snapped that Allen had apparently made himself "the new crowned federal mayor of New Orleans."

Allen tried unsuccessfully to reach the mayor by cell phone over the weekend, a Coast Guard spokesman. President Bush said White House chief of staff Andrew Card had also been pressing Nagin to pull back on the plan.

With the approach of Rita, Bush added his own voice to the mix, saying he had "deep concern" about the possibility that New Orleans' levees could be breached again.

In addition, Bush said there are significant environmental concerns. New Orleans still lacks safe drinking water, and there are fears about the contamination in the remaining floodwaters and the muck left behind in drained areas of the city.

"The mayor — you know, he's got this dream about having a city up and running, and we share that dream," the president said. "But we also want to be realistic about some of the hurdles and obstacles that we all confront in repopulating New Orleans."

About 20 percent of the city is still flooded, down from a high of about 80 percent after Katrina, and the water was expected to be pumped out by Sept. 30.

But officials with the Army Corps of Engineers said the repairs to the levees breached by Katrina are not yet strong enough to prevent flooding in a moderate storm, much less another hurricane. Brig. Gen. Robert Crear said Monday they hope to have the levees capable of handling a Category 3 storm by June, the start of hurricane season.

Nagin did not give any specifics about how he plans to enforce the renewed evacuation order.

In the raucous French Quarter, about a half-mile from where Nagin made his announcement, businesses were getting up and running, and bars were serving cold beers to National Guardsmen and passers-by.

Del Juneau, owner of a Bourbon Street lingerie shop, said it would be premature to order an evacuation based on the storm nearing Florida. "Where are you going to go? What are you going to do?" he said. "I'm not going anywhere."

Down the street at the Famous Door, bartender C.B. Dover, said: "If we have a forced evacuation, we'll go. If it's not forced, we're not going anywhere." Dover said the mayor "has been overreacting the whole time. ... He's reacting emotionally, and you can't do that."

Earlier in the day, as residents began streaming in at the mayor's invitation, cars were backed for two hours at an Interstate 10 checkpoint into the city. Tractor-trailers, emergency vehicles and National Guard trucks shared the highway with cars towing trailers full of hurricane gear and pickup trucks with their beds loaded with water, cleaning materials and coolers.

It was clear that at least some of the traffic was headed to sections of the city that had not yet officially opened.

Algiers, a neighborhood of 57,000 just across the Mississippi River from the French Quarter, is home to many of the companies that make floats for Mardi Gras parades. Unlike much of the rest of the city, it saw little damage from Hurricane Katrina three weeks ago and has electricity and drinkable water.

"Obviously we need to get businesses up and running any way we can," said Barry Kern, whose float businesses is stocked to the rafters with oversized imaginary creatures. "If we don't start somewhere, where do we start?"

Elsewhere across the city, where the damage was more severe, much of the sentiment seemed to be with the mayor and his attempts to reopen the city quickly.

"Send Bush here and we'll make him a po' boy and tell him to leave us alone," Kathleen Horn said as she cleaned up the debris piled in front of Slim Goodies Diner on Magazine Street in Uptown.