Bush Continues Gulf Coast Tour
President Bush, touring the Gulf Coast for the eighth time since Hurricane Katrina struck, pledged Tuesday that the U.S. government will not seek to dictate terms for rebuilding the hurricane-devastated Gulf Coast but would allow state and local officials to make key decisions.
Mr. Bush was also shining a spotlight on the vexing issue of how to house — temporarily and then permanently — the hundreds of thousands who lost homes in the storm six weeks ago.
The president of Tammany Parrish, a district not far from New Orleans visited by the president four weeks ago, described Mr. Bush's response as "uplifting."
"I'm beginning to see; I think one of our problems is the stress, as you see what's behind us was that we needed immediate assistance and that's tough," Kevin Davis, the parrish president, told Harry Smith of The Early Show.
Mr. Bush reveled in what he said is a spirit of revival in the battered region.
"I think we've seen the spirits change ... Local people are beginning to realize there's hope," Mr. Bush said in an interview with NBC's "Today" show.
Accompanied by first lady Laura Bush, he was pitching in at a Habitat for Humanity site in Covington, La., a town just north of New Orleans where the nonprofit is building houses for displaced people. The Bushes were appearing on "Today," which has been featuring the Habitat project.
Later, on his two-day trip to the storm zone, Mr. Bush was heading to Pass Christian, Miss. Mr. Bush was to attend the reopening of its Delisle Elementary School before returning to Washington.
On Monday, the president sampled some of New Orleans' finest, getting an update from Mayor Ray Nagin and members of his rebuilding commission over dinner at Ralph Brennan's Bacco, an Italian restaurant in the heart of the French Quarter. He then spent the night at Windsor Court, a luxury hotel that hasn't yet opened to the public but made Bush and his entourage welcome.
Other people in New Orleans are having more trouble finding places to stay, reports CBS News correspondent Trish Regan for The Early Show.
Regan spoke with a resident of the city's hard-hit Ninth Ward, which flooded twice, and is now full of wind-ripped homes also destroyed by stagnant water and oil. The woman, returning home for the first time, described seeing her wrecked house as "heartbreaking."
"The rest of my house is across the street," she said. But many residents, like this woman, don't want to live anywhere but New Orleans and are eager for it to be rebuilt. The question remains for many: Where do they stay in the meantime?
The visit was a sharp contrast to Bush's last to the city more than a month ago, when he had to bunk on the USS Iwo Jima docked on the Mississippi River near downtown. The city — especially the French Quarter, which was mostly spared by Katrina's flooding — is showing increasing signs of normalcy, with lights coming back on and establishments reopening.
Still, most stores and businesses remain closed, relatively few people are about — few are working — and many areas remain uninhabitable. Mr. Bush saw little of that, though, choosing instead to showcase signs of progress in the hurricane-battered city.
Last week, Mr. Bush said building temporary housing for those who can't go home, and may not be able to for months or longer, has been a less-than-stellar piece of the federal government's continuing response to Katrina. He acknowledged his administration could "probably do a better job."
Mr. Bush had said that everyone housed in shelters should be in apartments, trailers or, in some cases, hotels by mid-October as they look for permanent housing.
Though the number in shelters is well down from the high of 250,000, the government said more than 32,000 evacuees from Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which slammed the Gulf Coast again nearly a month later, still remained in 468 shelters as of last weekend. On Oct. 24, a FEMA program that reimburses the American Red Cross for the cost of hotel rooms is set to expire.
Over the weekend, U.S. Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of the administration's Katrina recovery effort, said about 120,000 trailers and mobile homes are due in Louisiana in the coming weeks to populate makeshift towns.
The trip marked Mr. Bush's public return to hurricane matters after nearly two weeks without an event devoted to the storms. The administration's slow and ineffective response to Katrina cut into the public's image of Mr. Bush as a strong leader. He initially responded to the criticism with repeated trips to the region, a commitment of billions of federal dollars and a quicker reaction to Rita.
More recently, though, Mr. Bush has switched his focus to the Supreme Court, Iraq and, particularly, the war on terror. He also has sought to take command of two new issues: the deadly earthquake that struck South Asia over the weekend and fears that an Asian bird flu outbreak will develop into a worldwide human killer.