Efforts to revive New Orleans get back in gear

NEW ORLEANS - The mammoth tasks of restoring power to much of New Orleans and removing heaps of debris, interrupted when Hurricane Rita rammed the Gulf Coast, resumed Sunday as the mayor pushed his plan to reopen parts of the city this week.

Even those areas newly flooded this weekend by Rita could be pumped dry again within a week after levee damage is repaired, far sooner than initially predicted, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman said Sunday.

“All indications are all operations are getting back to normal,” said Ted Monette, deputy federal coordinating officer for Katrina recovery.

Monette said federal officials had been coordinating with Mayor Ray Nagin’s effort to begin allowing evacuated residents to return and were supportive of his plan.

Workers dumped rock and sandbags into breaches in the city’s Industrial Canal throughout the night and were expected to complete the repair Sunday, said Mitch Frazier, a spokesman for the corps.

Entergy, Louisiana’s biggest power company, was assessing new damage that Rita caused for customers in the southwestern part of the state, but work also continued in New Orleans, said Chanel Lagarde, a company spokesman. More than 200,000 customers still lack power in the New Orleans area, many of them in badly damaged areas.

Entergy has restored power to most of the city’s central business district, and hopes to tackle work in the French Quarter early this week, he said.

Revised timeline for drying out
The storm surge created by Rita eroded levee repairs made after Hurricane Katrina and sent water surging back into the already devastated Ninth Ward. Once the breach is closed, engineers now believe the area could be pumped dry in a week, Frazier said.

Federal officials had said Saturday it would take two to three weeks to pump out the water delivered by Rita.

The water level in the Ninth Ward already had dropped dramatically on Sunday, a day after Rita blew ashore along the Louisiana-Texas state line, and the sun was shining.

“It looks like the weather is improving,” said Frazier. “That’s good news.”

Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Sunday she would ask the federal government for at least $1.5 billion for infrastructure repairs and $20.2 billion to protect New Orleans from future flooding after the passage of hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

‘So dependent on the weather’
The Corps of Engineers trucked rocks and airlifted giant sandbags to plug the hole in the Industrial Canal levee, but the corps’ commander on the ground was leery about how stable the makeshift repairs to the city’s fragile flood-control system would prove.

“It’s so dependent on the weather,” said Col. Richard Wagenaar, the corps’ district chief in New Orleans.

Signs of renewed life in the battered city included widespread utility trucks restoring electricity and restaurants seeking customers, such as the Slim Goodies diner in the Garden District.

“You wanna burger?” owner Kappa Horn called out to the steady stream of police and others who came by.

Horn’s diner doesn’t have electricity, but she’s been using supplies driven in from Baton Rouge and New Orleans’ West Bank to serve pancakes and burgers for more than a week. She closed for two days when Rita came through.

“The city is not going to survive unless it’s got people in it,” Horn said. “I want to be part of rebuilding my city.”

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