New Orleans – President Bush kept a watch Tuesday on “what we pray is not a devastating storm” – Hurricane Rita – as he flew over miles of flattened homes and mud-caked neighborhoods hit by Hurricane Katrina.
Bush received a briefing about Rita aboard the USS Iwo Jima, which is docked near downtown New Orleans, as the hurricane caused anxiety among Katrina victims in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.
Eager to show hands-on leadership after being criticized for a slow response to Katrina, Bush signed an emergency declaration for Florida, spoke with Texas Gov. Rick Perry about planning for Rita’s landfall and said military outfits are being removed from New Orleans to be out of Rita’s path and ready to help with recovery.
The White House said Bush had named Frances Fragos Town send, his in-house homeland-security adviser, to lead an administration investigation of “what went wrong and what went right” in the sluggish federal response to Katrina. The appointment of Townsend, a former federal prosecutor with a reputation as a tough adversary, is unlikely to satisfy Democrats who are demanding a fully independent investigation.
Bush said he was pleased that New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin suspended his plan to allow as many as a third of the city’s residents to return. He also said positive steps are being taken.
“What you’re beginning to see is a revitalized economy,” Bush said, standing before 110 trailers set up for employees who lost their homes at a recently reopened Folger’s coffee plant. “Progress is being made.”
Bush began the day in Gulfport, Miss., where he sat in on the first meeting of Gov. Haley Barbour’s Commission on Recovery, Rebuilding and Renewal.
