http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&u=/nm/20050910/ts_nm/katrina_dc_1
Rescuers collect dead but finder fewer than feared
By Jason Webb 1 hour, 30 minutes ago
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - The official death toll from Hurricane Katrina rose slowly on Saturday, boosting hopes that the calamity would claim far fewer lives than the 10,000 that had been feared.
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As police and soldiers went through drowned and mostly abandoned New Orleans house-by-house,
President George W. Bush again tried to invoke the spirit that united the nation after the September 11 attacks.
The
American Red Cross launched a drive to recruit 40,000 volunteers to care for survivors.
"Today, America is confronting another disaster that has caused destruction and loss of life. This time the devastation resulted not from the malice of evil men, but from the fury of water and wind," Bush said in his weekly radio address.
"America will overcome this ordeal, and we will be stronger for it," he said on the eve of the fourth anniversary of the New York and Washington attacks that killed some 2,700 people.
The Louisiana Dept. of Health and Hospitals raised the state's official hurricane death toll to 154 and 211 people were confirmed dead in Mississippi. There was no updated official figure from Alabama, which also sustained considerable damage in the August 29 storm. Katrina killed seven in Florida.
Red Cross spokesman John Degnan said his organization had 36,000 volunteers in the field and had established 675 shelters across the United States. But more were needed.
"The goal is to recruit 40,000 new Red Cross volunteers to come and help in shelters and serve meals and help at help sites and help at delivery sites throughout the affected area," Degnan said.
DIRE PREDICTIONS, FEWER BODIES
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin warned of a death toll as high as 10,000 in the first chaotic days after the storm, which displaced around a million people. Others warned of thousands.
As emergency workers searched abandoned houses, they found far fewer bodies than such predictions would have suggested.
A Reuters reporter who spent the day with the Georgia Army National Guard 148th Medical Company saw several people determined to stay in the city. When the helicopter unit checked out some homes where people were feared to have died, they found nobody, either alive or dead.
Bush has faced criticism for the federal government's performance -- described as slow and inadequate -- following Katrina. The president was to travel to the region for a third time on Sunday, the anniversary of 9/11.
A Newsweek poll published on Saturday found Bush's approval rating at a lowest-ever 38 percent. The survey found 53 percent of Americans no longer trusted him to make correct decisions in a foreign or domestic crisis, against 45 percent who did.
The New York Times reported on its Web site that the
Federal Emergency Management Agency dispatched only seven of its 28 urban search and rescue teams to the area before the storm hit, despite an extraordinary warning from the
National Hurricane Center that Katrina could cause "human suffering incredible by modern standards."
The Bush administration on Friday recalled FEMA head Michael Brown, handing his role in coordinating rescue and recovery to Vice Admiral Thad Allen, chief of staff of the
U.S. Coast Guard. Just a week ago, the president publicly told Brown he was doing a "heck of a job."
Allen met with local officials and told reporters he had discussed naming a single coordinator to harmonize recovery efforts by the many organizations involved.
"The water is receding. We are being helped by the pumps coming back on line," he said, but added many were still not functioning.
'KATRINA EXERCISE'
Vice President
Dick Cheney visited an emergency management center in Austin, Texas, and said the government was finally gaining control of the situation. "I think we are in fact on our way to getting on top of the whole Katrina exercise. We've got a lot of work ahead of us," he said.
There were more signs of recovery around New Orleans. Authorities said they would lift the mandatory evacuation order on Sunday for part of Plaquemines Parish, which covers territory in the Mississippi Delta south of the city.
But a Reuters reporter at Point Sulphur in the parish found almost all the houses smashed and many still under water. National guardsmen seeking bodies found none.
Entergy Corp. said it has restored power to two thirds of its 1.1 million customers in Mississippi and Louisiana but said it may take months to restore power to all of New Orleans.
Federal officials said 259 people were arrested and placed in a new Orleans holding facility, including 194 for looting, 26 for possessing stolen vehicles, two on felony gun charges, 10 for drug possession and two for resisting arrest.
"The security situation has stabilized in about the last 72 hours and has gotten better every day, said Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux of the Louisiana National Guard."
Some federal officials have put Katrina's cost at between $100 billion and $200 billion. Congress has approved $62.3 billion for hurricane relief sought by Bush, who said further requests will come.
