New Orleans – Hurricane Katrina’s death toll in Louisiana jumped by more than half Tuesday to 423 as recovery workers turned more of their attention to gathering up and counting the corpses in a city all but emptied out of the living.
The state health department announced the new death toll, which represented a sharp increase from 279 a day before.
The number of dead is all but certain to rise, because some flooded-out areas of the city have not been fully searched. But how high it might go is unclear.
Mayor C. Ray Nagin said earlier this month that New Orleans could have 10,000 dead. But a street-by-street sweep of the city last week yielded far fewer bodies than feared, and authorities said the toll could be well below the dire projections. But they offered no specific predictions.
Until the past few days, authorities were slow to release numbers, saying they were concentrating on rescuing the living first. Rescuers reported pushing corpses aside or tying them down to banisters or roofs for others to collect later.
As of Monday, at least 236 people were reported dead elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, most of them in Mississippi.
“Let me caution everyone: We have not done the secondary searches in the areas where the water was the highest. So we still have a lot of work to do, and those numbers probably will go up,” Nagin said Tuesday.
Over the weekend, at least 44 patients were found dead at a flooded-out New Orleans hospital.
Dr. Frank Minyard, the Orleans Parish coroner, suggested that further such discoveries are possible as the floodwaters recede.
“There just may be a lot of people who are still down in those deep waters, and some of the waters were 10, 12, 15 feet deep,” he said. “My biggest fear is that we will find something down there that is way out of proportion. Hopefully, it doesn’t happen, but we worry.”
BATON ROUGE, La.
Nursing-home owners charged in 34 deaths
The husband-and-wife owners of a New Orleans-area nursing home where 34 people died in Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters were charged Tuesday with negligent homicide.
The case represents the first major prosecution to come out of the disaster in New Orleans.
The owners of St. Rita’s Nursing Home in the town of Chalmette “were asked if they wanted to move (the patients). They did not. They were warned repeatedly that this storm was coming. In effect, their inaction resulted in the deaths of these patients,” Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti said.
Salvador Mangano and his wife, Mable, surrendered and were jailed on 34 counts of negligent homicide. Each count carries up to five years in prison.
The Manganos had an evacuation plan as required under state law and a contract with an ambulance service to evacuate the patients, but they did not call the company, Foti said. They also turned down an offer from St. Bernard Parish officials who asked if the nursing home wanted help evacuating, he said.
The attorney general said he is also investigating the discovery of more than 40 corpses at flooded-out Memorial Medical Center, in New Orleans’ Uptown section.
NEW ORLEANS
Port and airport back in operation
The airport reopened to commercial flights Tuesday for the first time since Hurricane Katrina struck more than two weeks ago, and the port was back in operation, too, as a battered New Orleans struggled to get up and running again.
Northwest Airlines Flight 947 from Memphis, Tenn. – the first commercial flight into or out of Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport since the storm hit – landed around midday with about 30 people aboard, far fewer than the jet could hold.
Those aboard included emergency workers from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Some carried only a few belongings in plastic bags and gym bags.
The city’s recovery could be seen along the New Orleans waterfront as well. A shipment of steel coils left the port by barge Monday, bound for a Hyundai auto plant in Greenville, Ala., port spokesman Chris Bonura said.
The port expected the arrival late Tuesday of its first cargo ship since the hurricane, and at least three more ships by week’s end, said Gary LaGrange, port president and chief executive. The arriving ship was carrying up to 500 containers of coffee and wood products from Argentina, Brazil and Mexico, LaGrange said.
“It’s a historical moment. Two weeks ago, the prognosis was six months, so to pull it off so our customers have enough faith and confidence in us is very heartwarming,” LaGrange said.
The port of New Orleans is the gateway to a river system serving 33 states along the Mississippi River or its tributaries. The port also connects to six railroads.
WASHINGTON
Corps expediting cleanup contracts
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says it is expediting its process for awarding contracts for the cleanup of damage left by Hurricane Katrina.
The corps expects to award “several contracts” soon with a total value “upwards of $1.5 billion” for the cleanup of debris in Louisiana and Mississippi, Lt. Col. Norbert Doyle, chief of contracting for the corps, said. Those contracts were advertised “only for two or three days” and that’s “perfectly legitimate,” Doyle said. Contracts typically are advertised for 30 days.
“In the emergency situation we’re in, I agree with my contracting folks in the field, we really have no choice,” Doyle said.
Money under the contracts will be provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he said.
DEVELOPMENTS
AUDITORS TO EYE CONTRACTS FOR REDEVELOPMENT
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said teams of federal auditors would scrutinize billions of dollars’ worth of government contracts. “We’re going to cut through red tape, but we’re not going to cut through laws and rules that govern ethics,” he said. Congress has appropriated more than $60 billion for reconstruction. The Democratic National Committee accused the administration on Tuesday of “giving no-bid contracts to Bush’s political cronies.”
MILITARY CRAFT READY TO EXIT
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said some military aircraft and other equipment may be able to move out of the Gulf Coast soon. “We’ve got to the point where most if not all of the search and rescue is completed,” said Rumsfeld, who is attending a NATO meeting in Berlin. He said nothing will be moved out of the area without the authorization of governors, the military leaders there and the president.
COMMUNICATIONS UPGRADE URGED
A group of Democratic senators pressed Congress for a $5billion upgrade of communications equipment that would make it easier for police, firefighters and other law enforcement authorities to talk to one another during emergencies. A similar measure was rejected in July as part of a homeland-security bill.
“They must be able to communicate with each other. This is a life-and-death issue,” said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
FUEL PRODUCTION TRICKLING BACK
Oil and gas production are slowly resuming, but 58 percent of Gulf Coast oil production is still shut down, as is 38 percent of the region’s natural-gas production, according to Interior Secretary Gale Norton.
TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM HIT HARD
Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta calls the hurricane the worst disaster for transportation in U.S. history. The government estimates damage to highways and bridges alone at $3 billion.
LESS DISEASE, BUT MORE INJURIES
Health workers who had worried about the spread of disease after the hurricane say they’re seeing less illness than expected but more injuries, including carbon monoxide exposure from generators and chain-saw injuries.
