- NEW ORLEANS - The bodies
of more than 40 mostly elderly patients were found in a flooded-out hospital
in the biggest known cluster of corpses to be discovered so far in hurricane-ravaged
New Orleans.
-
- The exact circumstances under which they died were unclear,
with at least one hospital official saying Monday that some of the patients
had died before the storm, while the others succumbed to causes unrelated
to Katrina.
-
- The announcement, which raises Louisiana's official death
toll to nearly 280, came as President Bush got his first up-close look
at the destruction.
-
- "My impression of New Orleans is this: That there
is a recovery on the way," Bush said in the shadow of a freeway overpass,
destroyed cars littering the landscape behind him.
-
- Despite the devastation and miles of still flooded streets,
there were encouraging signs of recovery: Nearly two-thirds of southeastern
Louisiana's water treatment plants were up and running. Louis Armstrong
New Orleans International Airport planned to resume limited passenger service
Tuesday. Forty-one of 174 permanent pumps were in operation, on pace to
help drain the still half-flooded city by Oct. 8.
-
- That doesn't mean a quick return to normalcy for residents
or for business owners, who were let back in Monday to assess the damage
and begin the slow process of starting over.
-
- The Federal Emergency Management Agency expects to provide
temporary housing for 200,000 hurricane victims for up to five years, most
in Louisiana. The agency is planning to use trailer homes to create "temporary
cities," some with populations up to 25,000, said Brad Fair, head
of the FEMA housing effort.
-
- "This may not be quite on the scale of building
the pyramids, but it's close," Fair said. He had no cost estimates.
-
- FEMA's embattled director Mike Brown also announced Monday
he would resign "in the best interest of the agency and best interest
of the president." Brown has been vilified for the slow and unfocused
federal response to a hurricane, already considered the nation's costliest
ever.
-
- Insurance experts have doubled to at least $40 billion
their estimate of insured losses caused by Katrina. Risk Management Solutions
Inc. of Newark, Calif., put the total economic damage at more than $125
billion.
-
- Lawmakers in Washington proposed some tax changes Monday
to help the victims get back on their feet, such as letting them tap retirement
accounts without penalty and encouraging donations of cash, food and school
books.
-
- Former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial called for a compensation
fund for the hurricane victims similar to the fund created for victims
of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
-
- The death toll has also been rising as more bodies are
recovered across the region.
-
- At least 40 bodies were found Sunday at the 317-bed Memorial
Medical Center, but the exact number was unclear. Bob Johannesen, a spokesman
for the state Department of Health and Hospitals, said 45 patients had
been found; hospital assistant administrator David Goodson said there were
44, plus three on the grounds.
-
- Also unclear was exactly how the patients died.
-
- Steven Campanini, a spokesman for the hospital's owner,
Tenet Healthcare Corp., said some of the patients were dead before the
storm arrived, and none of the deaths resulted from lack of food, water
or electricity to power medical equipment. He said many were seriously
ill.
-
- Goodson said patients died while waiting to be evacuated
over the four days after the hurricane hit, as temperatures inside the
hospital reached 106 degrees. "I would suggest that that had a lot
to do with" the deaths, he said of the heat.
-
- Family members and nurses were "literally standing
over the patients, fanning them," he said.
-
- Police Chief Eddie Compass declined to answer any questions
about the bodies, including whether officers received any calls for help
from those inside the hospital after it was evacuated.
-
- Dr. Jeffrey Kochan, a Philadelphia radiologist volunteering
in New Orleans, said members of the team that recovered the bodies from
the hospital in the city's Uptown section told him they found 36 corpses
floating on the first floor.
-
- "These guys were just venting. They need to talk,"
he said. "They're seeing things no human being should have to see."
-
- Bush, in his third visit to New Orleans since the storm,
made his first foray to the streets Monday and toured the city for 45 minutes
aboard the back of a truck, forcing him at times to duck to avoid low-hanging
electrical wires and branches.
-
- He disputed suggestions that the government responded
sluggishly because the victims were mostly poor and black.
-
- "The storm didn't discriminate and neither will
the recovery effort," the president said. "When those Coast Guard
choppers, many of whom were first on the scene, were pulling people off
roofs, they didn't check the color of a person's skin."
-
- In New Orleans' central business district - which includes
oil and gas companies, hotels, restaurants, banks and brokerages - business
owners were issued passes into the city to retrieve vital records or equipment,
such as computers.
-
- Among the businessmen allowed back into New Orleans on
Monday was Terry Cockerham, owner of Service Glass, which installs windows
at businesses downtown. He has been working out of his house because his
business was destroyed by looters and flooding.
-
- "This is about the most work I've ever had,"
he said. "We'll work seven days a week until we get this job finished.
I don't want to get rich. I just want to get everything back right."
-
- In the French Quarter, Nick Ditta was at Mango Mango,
the bar he manages on Bourbon Street, searching for time cards. "It's
a mess man. There is no doubt about it," Ditta said. "But our
people are going to get paid. That's all I'm worried about."
-
- New Orleans Metropolitan Convention & Visitors Bureau
president J. Stephen Perry said Katrina cost the city about 100 to 200
major conventions. But he expected the tourism industry to be among the
first to bounce back, since the French Quarter and many hotels suffered
little damage.
-
- "The really positive thing long-term is, the core
of our infrastructure of the $5 billion to $8 billion tourism industry
remained intact," Perry said. "As odd as it may sound right now,
we are optimistic that this recovery is not only going to happen, its going
to happen well and we're going to have a great city going again."
-
-
- Associated Press writers Erin McClam, Mary Foster, Colleen
Long, Warren Levinson and Howie Rumberg contributed to this report.
-
- http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/12627700.htm
|
