Bush visits, vows to rebuild

Slowly, businesses are reopening and some ship traffic is returning.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
BATON ROUGE, La. -- President Bush got his first close look Monday at flood-ravaged New Orleans, even as state health officials revealed another grim discovery: 45 people found dead at a hospital evacuated more than a week ago.
A hospital administrator told a dramatic story of doctors and nurses trying to keep patients alive without power, surrounded by water, while waiting for help that never arrived. At one point, helicopter evacuations were interrupted by gunfire, he said.
Bush pledged that the federal government will help rebuild New Orleans in whatever form the people of the damaged city decide. He said he could see progress being made from his tour in a military convoy.
As floodwaters dropped Monday, they began to yield to signs of rebuilding and rebirth -- as well as significant challenges ahead. Scattered businesses were trying to reopen; the Coast Guard allowed some ship traffic on the lower Mississippi River during daylight hours, and the first commercial flights are scheduled to resume today at Louis Armstrong New Orleans Airport.
In south Mississippi, most residents were able to enjoy the simple pleasure of flushing toilets once again.
Electricity is being restored more quickly than expected to some areas of Louisiana, allowing critical industries -- including oil and gas refineries -- to get back to work. And Michael Olivier, a top economic development official in Louisiana, said a number of major companies plan to come back to New Orleans, including Entergy and Oreck Corp., which both temporarily relocated to other states.
Much more to be done
But major problems remain throughout the Gulf Coast region. St. Bernard Parish President Henry "Junior" Rodriguez said a massive oil spill may have permanently damaged about 1,500 homes in his community.
It could take eight months or more to clean out the hurricane-damaged areas, the Army Corps of Engineers said at a briefing in Washington, estimating that 20 million cubic yards of debris are scattered across the Mississippi coast alone -- enough to cover 300 football fields in 50-foot piles.
The agency doesn't have estimates for Louisiana yet.
It will also take months to rebuild the important Interstate 10 connection from New Orleans to Slidell across Lake Pontchartrain. Gordon Nelson with the Louisiana Department of Transportation said two eastbound lanes should be finished in 45 days, and one westbound lane will be rebuilt by January.
Pumps continue to push 6.5 billion gallons of water out of New Orleans daily, the Corps said, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency is paying for emergency construction to repair the levees. They'll only be rebuilt to withstand a Category 3 storm, however, because that's the level of protection currently authorized by Congress. Katrina was a Category 4 hurricane.
About 40 percent of New Orleans remains flooded, down from 80 percent after Katrina struck and protective levees broke two weeks ago.
Bodies found in hospital
The bodies of 45 storm victims were found over the weekend at Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans, which had been surrounded by floodwaters, said Bob Johannesen, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.
They died in the four days after the storm while waiting to be evacuated, an assistant hospital administrator told The Associated Press. Temperatures inside the 317-bed hospital got as hot as 106 degrees, and the only way to get people out was by boat.
Many of the patients were elderly and seriously ill, and none expired because of lack of food or electricity, a spokesman for hospital owner TenetHealthcare Corp. told the AP. Some may even have died before the storm, he said.
Some of the recovered bodies had been in the hospital's morgue, but most of them were patients who died in the first four days after the storm hit, while the hospital waited for help, Tenet Healthcare spokesman Harry Anderson said.
It never came.
By Tuesday, he said, the floodwaters surrounding the building had washed out the hospital's generator, cutting off electricity, and temperatures in the facility reached up to 110 degrees.
Doctors and nurses worked around the clock to stabilize the sickest, using hand ventilators to keep patients alive, Anderson said. Some didn't make it.
Hospital officials frantically contacted the National Guard, Coast Guard and state emergency officials to ask for help as the waters rose, Anderson said. Eventually, the third floor was flooded.
"Everybody said, 'Be patient. It's going to happen,"' he said.
But on Wednesday, Anderson said, hospital officials were told by the state that they would have to "use their own assets" to evacuate up to 260 patients. The hospital hired boats and private helicopters. The rescue effort was interrupted at one point by gunfire at the helicopters, Anderson said.
"This is a tragic byproduct of this disaster," he said. "People who are frail and vulnerable couldn't survive."
The bodies were taken to a morgue established for Katrina victims in St. Gabriel, La., Johannesen said.The discovery helped push the Louisiana death toll to 279 on Monday, up from 197 on Sunday. More than 400 people are confirmed dead in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast two weeks ago Monday.
New Orleans toll
About 250 bodies have been recovered in New Orleans and its immediate suburbs, said Frank Minyard, the Orleans Parish coroner. He expects the death toll to rise as recovery efforts move into deeper floodwaters -- but not to the numbers some had feared.
"It's going to grow, but I don't think it will get to 5,000," Minyard said. "I'd be shocked if it does."
Autopsies began Monday at the temporary facility in St. Gabriel. Minyard said most of the bodies are not recognizable.
"The decomposition is bad. Every body is swollen. Every body has decomposition and deterioration," he said. "It's almost impossible to physically identify them. If you have your loved one there, you can't really see them."
Coroners are performing autopsies only on bodies that appear to have suffered trauma, such as gunshot wounds, and on the 26 recovered from a nursing home in St. Bernard Parish because of questions about negligence.
Death certificates for people who appear to have died strictly as a result of the storm will simply be labeled "Hurricane Katrina death," he said.