The mayor of New Orleans invited residents of some of the city's most popular neighborhoods to return at their own risk beginning yesterday, a move that could bring back about one-third of the city's half-million inhabitants.
The newly opened areas, including the French Quarter and Garden District, all escaped major flooding in a city that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina a month ago before receiving a second blow from Hurricane Rita last week.
Business owners began showing up on Thursday, some saying they were pulling out and others vowing to rebuild.
PHOTO: AFP
"We are lucky. I was expecting much worse than this,'' said Germame Kassa, whose Ethiopian grocery and deli was relatively unscathed, although the stink of rotting food permeated through the locked doors. "One way or the other, we'll be back in business.''
Mayor Ray Nagin was pushing aggressively to reopen the city despite concerns raised by state and federal officials. Serious health hazards remain because of bacteria-laden floodwaters, a lack of drinkable water and a sewage system that still does not work, said Stephen Johnson, chief of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
"There are a whole lot of factors that need to be weighing on the mayor's mind,'' Johnson said.
He said the EPA was not taking a position on Nagin's plan, but he refused to answer when asked if he would allow his own family to return to New Orleans.
State officials say at least 140,000 homes and businesses across southeastern Louisiana were so badly damaged that they must be torn down. The storms also left 19.95 million tonnes of debris, including 350,000 cars and trucks, said Mike McDaniel, chief of the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality.
Even as residents were to begin pouring back into New Orleans, the police department said it was investigating a dozen officers accused of looting during the lawlessness that engulfed the city after Katrina.
"The investigation does in fact show police officers with some items,'' acting Police Superintendent Warren Riley said on Thursday.
He said four of the 12 officers have already been suspended for failing to stop looting.
"It was not clear that they in fact looted,'' Riley said of the four. "What is clear is that some action needed to be taken and it was not.''
Riley drew a distinction between taking useful items such as food and jeans, which he contended didn't amount to looting in a crisis, and taking luxuries such as jewelry.
Incidents in which officers took Cadillacs from a dealer's lot were not looting because the officers patrolled in the cars, Riley said.
Katrina's death toll in Louisiana rose to 923 on Thursday, up from 896 the day before, the state health department said.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS