CNN wrote:General: Death toll likely much lower than 10,000
Mayors fault FEMA response to hurricane
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- The Army general in charge of the U.S. military's hurricane relief effort said Sunday that Hurricane Katrina's death toll in New Orleans will be "a heck of a lot lower" than officials had feared.
Lt. Gen Russel Honore told CNN's "Late Edition" the death toll in New Orleans is unlikely to reach 10,000, a figure Mayor Ray Nagin had estimated based on how many people appeared to have evacuated and how many had stayed behind.
"I think it's going to be a lower number, much lower than the 10,000," said Honore. "A heck of a lot lower than that."
The number, Honore said, "came out at a very emotional time, with not a lot of facts, and I think from talking to the city officials and the communicating with the parish presidents, I think intuitively we were saying, that number will be much lower."
He emphasized that officials still do not know how many people died in the storm and flooding that ravaged New Orleans.
As of Sunday morning, the official death toll in Louisiana was 154. Officials in five states put the overall total of dead at 383.
President Bush will fly to New Orleans on Sunday, his third trip to the Gulf Coast since the storm struck.
On Saturday, Bush told a radio audience that Americans will come together and make the region "more vibrant than ever." (Full story)
Honore said his troops will continue to assist New Orleans residents who refuse to leave their homes despite a mandatory evacuation order.
When asked if the assistance his forces are providing -- bottles of water and food for people who won't leave -- is in opposition to what the city and state want, Honore said local officials are also giving out supplies.
"I mean, these are tough decisions. They go to the heart and core of our democracy and people being able to make their own decisions," he said. "But there is a greater good for the community, I've said in many meetings at the state and the city level, and they will work their way through that.
"Right now, we want to make sure that we're taking care of the people that are alive, and that we are treating them with dignity and respect."
Honore's comments echoed what Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of the federal relief task force, said on ABC's "This Week."
Allen said that military members will go door to door in a support role, and if someone did not want to leave, it would become "a local law enforcement matter."
Nagin, appearing on NBC's "Meet The Press", said he wants the city to bounce back swiftly.
"The big thing is going to be what happens when the testing comes back -- the test results from the water that we sampled," he said. "If that comes back with normal levels or just a little bit elevated levels as far as health risks, we will definitely accelerate and make sure that not only the French Quarter, but Algiers and some of uptown and our airport comes back on line so we can get the city going quickly."
Nagin said he still needed to confirm a report that the floodwaters will be gone much sooner than first thought, but progress was being made.
"I always knew that once we got the pumps up, some of our significant pumps going, that we could accelerate the draining process," he said. "The big one is pumping station six, which is our most powerful pump, and I am understanding that that's just about ready to go."
The Army Corps of Engineers revised Saturday its timetable for draining the floodwaters from New Orleans, saying the process should be completed in October. The corps said 32 of the 148 pumps in and around the city were operating as of noon Saturday, and Allen said pumping capacity is his top priority. (Full story)
Mayors slam FEMA response
Almost two weeks after Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, some of the cities hardest hit by the storm are waiting for more help.
"Clearly the FEMA response has been slow," Matthew Avara, mayor of Pascagoula, Mississippi, told CNN Saturday night.
"We got a lot of good people on the ground here that are with FEMA and with the state agencies," he said. "They wear their badges, and they look good. But unfortunately, we just not have seen all the assets and all the resources that we need in our city."
FEMA -- the Federal Emergency Management Agency -- has been criticized for what state and local officials have said was a slow response to Katrina, which hit the Gulf Coast August 29.
FEMA director Michael Brown was recalled to Washington on Friday by Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who named Adm. Allen to head the hurricane relief efforts.
Slidell, Louisiana, Mayor Ben Morris also slammed FEMA Saturday, saying when the storm hit, "everything we did was on our own."
The situation was gradually changing, he said.
"It's been quite slow, but we do have some of their folks on the ground, and they're working real hard," he said. "Hopefully, they'll get up to speed sometime soon."
FEMA said Saturday it has paid $669 million to more than 570,000 households affected by the storm, The Associated Press reported.
Other developments
* The federal government Saturday abandoned its effort to prevent the media from reporting on the recovery of bodies in New Orleans after CNN filed a lawsuit. (Full story)
* Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, criticized President Bush on Sunday for responding to the crisis with a "spin operation" but no apparent sense that the government had failed its people. Obama pointed to a Cabinet meeting Bush held last week, during which the president briefly addressed cameras. "There was no sense of reflection, no sense that, you know, things didn't go the way they were supposed to and that we needed to take away some lessons learned," Obama told ABC's "This Week."
* The American Red Cross put out an urgent call Saturday for 40,000 new volunteers to help feed, house and comfort Hurricane Katrina victims. The first shift of 10,000 recruits will be needed in two weeks to relieve 36,000 volunteers now deployed, Red Cross spokesman John Degnan said.
