Bush to visit communities devastated by hurricane
US President George Bush hopes his tour of Gulf Coast communities battered by Hurricane Katrina will boost the spirits of increasingly desperate storm victims and their tired rescuers.
The president’s visit today was also aimed at responding to some of the criticism that he engineered a too-little, too-late response.
Four days after Katrina made landfall in southeastern Louisiana, Bush was to get a second, closer look at the devastation wrought by the storm’s 145 mph winds and 25-foot storm surge in an area stretching from just west of New Orleans to Pensacola, Florida. In all, there are 90,000 square miles under federal disaster declaration.
Beginning in Mobile, Alabama, the president was to fly by helicopter over some of the hardest-hit areas along the Alabama and Mississippi coasts and stop at a few points in Mississippi to hear from those on the ground.
Given the chaos of the early days after the storm, Bush’s schedule remained fluid up until the last minute. Aides considered limiting his visit to New Orleans, mostly drowned in rank floodwaters and descending in many areas into lawlessness, to only an aerial tour.
Today’s trip follows a 35-minute flyover of the region he took on Wednesday aboard Air Force One. It offers Bush more of a firsthand assessment of the progress that has been made since he raced back to Washington to oversee the recovery effort.
But, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, the president also was going there to bring, on behalf of the nation, “support and compassion for the victims and our appreciation” for those helping with the ongoing response.
“This is an agonising time for the people of the Gulf Coast,” Bush said from the Oval Office.
Amid the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, Bush has other problems besides the hurricane: petrol prices have soared past three dollars a gallon in some places, and support is ebbing for the war in Iraq.
So Bush has tried to respond in a way that evokes the national goodwill he cultivated after the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks – and that does not recall the criticism his father, former President Bush, endured after Hurricane Andrew slammed Florida in 1992.
But the president began facing questions about his leadership in the crisis almost immediately.
Though he cut his August stay at his Texas ranch short by two days to return to Washington, some said he shouldn’t have waited until two days after the storm hit to do so.
The president and his aides have repeatedly rattled off specifics about the massive federal response effort under way. Some people say the federal government could do more, or do it more quickly, if so many National Guard troops hadn’t been sent to Iraq.
There are already questions about funding for the Army Corps of Engineers’ part in managing the levees that protected New Orleans, especially given years of warnings that the network of barriers was inadequate for the largest storms.
The White House made available top Corps officials to assure reportersthat cuts to the agency’s budget did not cause the Katrina disaster. Even though the administration has chronically cut back on the Corps’ own requests for funding - including two key New Orleans-area projects – White House officials trumpeted the administration’s support for the Corps.
That didn’t stop Terry Ebbert, the head of emergency operations for New Orleans, from speaking his mind.
“This is a national emergency. This is a national disgrace,” said Ebbert. He said it had taken too long to evacuate the Superdome, a sports complex that quickly became a squalid shelter for tens of thousands of storm victims.
Bush announced on Thursday that he had asked two former presidents – his father and Bill Clinton – to head an appeal for public donations to help hurricane victims. The two men performed a similar role in the wake of the tsunami that struck nations along the Indian Ocean last year.
