Feds bolster Gulf Coast relief efforts

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration intends to seek $10 billion to cover immediate relief needs on the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and the military is poised to put 30,000 National Guard troops on the ground, officials said Thursday.

Several congressional officials said the $10 billion would cover immediate costs for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the government’s front-line responder in cases of natural disasters.

Majority Leader Bill Frist was to convene the Senate at 10 p.m. ET Thursday for a vote on a $10 billion supplemental spending bill to pay for hurricane relief and recovery. The House was to convene Friday to pass the bill.

FEMA is spending an estimated $500 million a day as it struggles to respond to devastating flooding in New Orleans and severe destruction that spans the length of the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida.

"The federal government will do its part," President Bush said at a news conference Thursday. "But the private sector needs to do its part, as well."

As part of that effort, Bush announced that his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Bill Clinton would lead a private fund-raising campaign for Katrina victims. The two embarked on a similar joint mission after the devastating Dec. 26, 2004, tsunami in South Asia.

Guard sends more troops to New Orleans
Meanwhile, the military said Thursday it expects to put 30,000 National Guard troops on duty in the Gulf states as demands grow for more security and relief assistance, the commander in charge of military relief and rescue efforts said Thursday.

About 24,000 of those will be on the ground in Louisiana and Mississippi in the next three days, Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore said in a telephone interview with reporters at the Pentagon. He also ordered the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan from the Louisiana coast to waters off Biloxi, Miss., to assist with hurricane relief operations there.

By Thursday night, the National Guard expects to boost troop levels to 18,100 in Louisiana and Mississippi. Those numbers could swell to nearly 30,000 in the afflicted region in coming days, the Pentagon said.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Thursday that 1,400 National Guard troops per day are being sent in to control looting and lawlessness in New Orleans, quadrupling the regular police force in the city by the weekend.

‘Security is a concern’
Already, 2,800 National Guardsmen are in the city to help local police since Hurricane Katrina produced devastating floods in New Orleans, Chertoff said at a news conference with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Another 1,400 Guard troops and military police units are being added daily, he said.

“Security is a concern,” Gonzales said. “It is a priority.”

National Guard troops are controlled by the governors of individual states.

“We will be deploying into New Orleans a force the size of the New Orleans police department each day, every day, for the next three days. That is a remarkable movement of law enforcement capability into an area that clearly needs augmentation and reinforcement,” Assistant Defense Secretary Paul McHale said.

In all, the Pentagon said more than 320,000 National Guard soldiers, airmen, and their equipment from all states are available to support relief efforts, though it was not immediately clear how many of these assets would actually be sent to the region.

“We continue to build our capability,” Honore said. “It’s a trying situation at best, and the enormity of the task is significant.”

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, commander of National Guard forces, were meeting with President Bush Thursday to brief him on the military response.

Huge disaster zone
With federal disaster declarations covering 90,000 square miles of the Gulf area — an area roughly the size of Great Britain — the scope of the devastation and the federal government's response to it are unprecedented, White House spokesman Scott McLellan said at Thursday press conference.

"This is one of, if not the worst, natural disasters in our nation's history," McLellan said.

Asked if the government had done enough to prepare for the potential destruction a major hurricane could wreak across the low-lying Gulf Coast, McLellan said: "There was a lot of prepositioning of assets even before the arrival of Katrina."

Chertoff said the Coast Guard has rescued 3,000 people from flood and hurricane-damaged areas but acknowledged that continued flooding in New Orleans has made the federal government’s job unusually difficult.

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