New Orleans mayor halts city’s reopening

Emergency rooms needed
The Garden District’s Tour Infirmary, one of the city’s largest hospitals, announced plans to reopen on Wednesday, when residents are due to start moving back there. That would make it the first hospital to reopen since the storm. Cleaning crews were busy Sunday carting out debris and readying the hospital.

Dr. Brobson Lutz, New Orleans’ former health director and an assistant coroner for Orleans Parish, said the hospitals clearly will not be up to accreditation standards, but the city still needs them open as soon as possible.

“I don’t believe the people in New Orleans or the doctors give a hoot whether they accredit our hospitals or not,” Lutz said. “We need to have our emergency rooms open so that if people returning need emergency care for trauma or infections or other things, they can get it.”

City, suburbs reawaken
Some city residents returned over the weekend and many said they met little resistance at checkpoints. Power is scheduled to return to the French Quarter by Friday and to Uptown by next Monday, a spokesman for Entergy New Orleans said.

In the New Orleans suburbs, a few gas stations were open in Metairie, along with a handful of coffee shops and burger joints. Officials gave the all-clear for the return to neighboring Jefferson Parish on Sunday.

“It feels good to come out again,” said Rolita Smith, 38, who ventured out to buy a bottle of whiskey for her cousin’s birthday.

Euthanasia during Katrina?
Cappiello also said he had heard unconfirmed reports that some doctors may have euthanized some critically ill patients who could not be moved out, rather than leaving them to die from flooding or neglect.

“There was a whisper about that when we were down there,” he said. “It may prove to have some viability to it. Sometimes horrible decisions like that have to be made.”

The flooded areas of New Orleans continued shrinking over the weekend, but crews still searched by boat for the dead. The state Health Department raised the death toll from Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana by 90 to 736. The toll across the Gulf Coast was 973.

Former President Clinton, speaking on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, put some of the blame for the plight of the poor in New Orleans on the Bush administration.

“You can’t have an emergency plan that works if it only affects middle-class people up, and when you tell people to go do something they don’t have the means to do, you’re going to leave the poor out,” Clinton said, referring to the many people who did not have transportation to evacuate before the storm.

‘Short-term impact’ seen on budget deficit
Meanwhile, the White House said Monday costs related to Hurricane Katrina will have a short-term impact on the U.S. budget deficit, adding that it still believed the deficit would be cut in half by 2009.

“The costs we’re talking about related to Katrina are going to have a short-term impact on the deficit. They’re one-time costs. But we believe we can continue to meet the president’s commitment to halve the deficit by 2009,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

The White House and Congress are wrestling with how to pay for the cost of rebuilding and relief efforts in the aftermath of the hurricane that some see as topping $200 billion.

MORE FROM KATRINA: THE LONG ROAD BACK

Katrina: The Long Road Back Section Front

Apologetic Nagin visits N.Y. Bush sees rebirth from ‘sadness’ of Katrina Special report: Rebuilding lives Katrina exodus felt far and wide A tangled tale of Katrina survival ‘New Orleans is still crying’ Brian Williams: We were witnesses Developers' past includes fraud Special report: Rising from Ruin Dateline video blogs: Covering Katrina Katrina: The Long Road Back Section Front   Add Katrina: The Long Road Back headlines to your news reader: