President Bush will address the nation from Louisiana on Thursday and offer a public already unsatisfied with the government's response to Hurricane Katrina, an updated assessment on recovery efforts in the region, the White House announced yesterday.
The announcement came one day after Mike Brown, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), resigned from his post amid a flurry of accusations from lawmakers and the public who said he and other state and local government officials were to slow in responding to the hurricane.
President Bush acknowledged for the first time yesterday that some of the blame should fall on his shoulders. "Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at a news conference from the White House. "To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility."
A recently released poll from the Pew Research Center shows that 67 percent of Americans believe the president could have done more to help victims of the hurricane. However, polling data also reflects that the public is equally displeased with the response from state and local governments in Louisiana. Fifty-one percent said officials there could have done more.
Evacuees Shot At
Officials in Louisiana have said in press reports that they did all they could to help evacuations in New Orleans but received little help from the federal government or local communities in the area. Stories from evacuees saying they were turned away at gunpoint when they tried to enter other counties may add credibility to the claims of Louisiana officials.
In interviews broadcast Monday night on CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360" and "News night With Aaron Brown," evacuees told to flee New Orleans said that they walked across a bridge for almost two hours to the suburban city of Gretna only to be turned around at gunpoint. "We got to the top of the bridge. They stopped us with guns," said Tim Sheer, an evacuee speaking on "News night With Aaron Brown." "...and we didn't think anything when we saw the deputies there. Then all of a sudden we heard shooting."
Sheer said on the program that at least two hundred people were turned away and that many of them were elderly and injured. "We had people in wheel chairs, we had people in strollers, people on crutches, so we were a slow moving group."
Gretna's police chief denied that evacuees were shot at and said that the reason they were turned away was because his city was no more prepared to house the evacuees than New Orleans. He promised a full investigation into the incident, press reports said.
Meanwhile, missions to recover the bodies of those unable to escape the hurricane continued yesterday. As of late last night, officials reported that the death toll in New Orleans was 423. That number is expected to rise in the coming days, according to press reports.
