Hurricane-Related Job Losses Jump

Jobless Claims Due To Gulf Hurricanes Now At 438,000

(CBS/AP)  The number of people who have lost their jobs because of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita jumped to 438,000 last week as the economic shockwaves from the nation's costliest natural disaster continued to be felt six weeks after Katrina careened across the Gulf Coast.

The Labor Department reported that an additional 75,000 hurricane-related claims were filed last week out of a nationwide total of 389,000 new claims for unemployment benefits.

Government analysts said that Katrina, which hit near New Orleans on Aug. 29, was still accounting for more layoffs than Rita, which came ashore near the Texas-Louisiana border on Sept. 24.

The rise of 75,000 in hurricane-related unemployment benefit claims was up slightly from 74,000 such claims two weeks ago, the first week that claims from Rita showed up. The highest week for claims attributed to the hurricanes was the week ending Sept. 17, when claims from Katrina totaled 108,000.

Analysts said it is likely that hurricane-related claims have peaked but they said it was likely that they will remain a significant portion of total jobless claims for several more weeks, reflecting the widespread destruction that wiped out thousands of businesses along the Gulf Coast.

Meanwhile, officials have just begun to venture into the ravaged and overwhelmingly poor Ninth Ward, where water rose to rooftops after levees were breached.

And residents have been allowed back into the area over the past few days, CBS News correspondent Drew Levinson reports for The Early Show.

Levinson spoke with Troy Green, a resident of the Ninth Ward who has been wondering about the state of his home for six weeks — but hasn't been able to see it until now. But even after being allowed back, Green left his family where they had been staying in another part of the state, fearing they wouldn't be able to handle seeing the destruction.

The area is mostly abandoned, its schools still architecturally stunning but devastated. Scattered along the hallway on the second floor of Louis Armstrong Elementary are reminders of the poverty: dozens of pink applications for free lunch. The school's student body was 99 percent black and 95 percent received free or reduced-price lunches.

If environmental teams determine the school unsafe, it likely will be demolished.

"Would you put your kid in this school again?" asked Martin McFarland, managing director of Alvarez & Marsal, and an expert in real estate and construction.

Not only were the majority of schools failing, the district was in financial straits — more than $25 million in the red — prompting it to hire a financial management firm to help the troubled system.

But before Alvarez & Marsal could come to grips with the operational side of the district's 126 schools, Katrina hit and forced the firm to take on a new role: crisis management.