Bush visits still-ravaged Gulf Coast 1 year after Katrina

U.S. President George W. Bush arrived on the Gulf Coast Monday as residents in the ravaged region prepared to mark the one-year anniversary of the hurricane that haunts their lives and his presidency.

Bush's image as a leader is still tarnished by the halting federal response to Katrina. A poll earlier this month found two-thirds of Americans still disapprove of the president's response to the storm.

"We have a duty to help the local people recover," Bush said from Biloxi, Miss., where the response and rebuilding effort has gone better than in Louisiana.

His two-day visit to the region that hasn't recovered from Hurricane Katrina's devastating strike last Aug. 29 comes amid worries that a new tropical storm could affect the region and challenge his promise that the botched post-Katrina response will not be repeated.

Bush praised local and state officials and reassured residents in the state that the federal government would continue to help with the rebuilding.

"You see progress," he said, citing the removal of 98 per cent of the dry debris from Biloxi.

"We understand people are still anxious to get in their homes," he said. "It starts with a large cheque."

Democrats are converging on the Gulf along with Bush, intending to make the case that he and the Republican Party should be held accountable for failing storm victims — not just at first, but still.

Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean called Bush's trip nothing more than a public relations offensive designed to paper over failures.

He said Bush's promises of help for Katrina victims and changes to the federal response effort remain largely unfulfilled.

Bush's trip is his 13th to the Gulf Coast since Katrina and his first in more than three months.

New Orleans marks anniversary

The latest itinerary includes a dinner Monday with state and local officials in New Orleans, a city still reeling from the storm's destruction. Right now, the city's population is about half of what it was before Katrina blasted through the city's levees.

In the hardest-hit neighbourhood, the lower ninth ward, the demolished homes and boarded-up businesses far outnumber the buildings that are occupied. Reconstruction has been slow and most residents have yet to return.

"This [is] the house my mommy and daddy had," said Christine Green, one of the few residents who stayed, as she opened the door to the house she's lived in all her life. All that's left of it are the exterior walls, a rotten wooden subfloor and an ancient fan making a feeble attempt to cut through the hot soupy air.

"I came back and I'm going to stay here. Katrina ain't going to stop me."

'Leave it in the Lord's hands'

Green is living in a government-issue trailer in the front yard while she waits for compensation money to rebuild her home. But unlike many, she said she isn't angry about it.

"I'm going to leave it in the Lord's hands," she told CBC News. "It don't make sense for me to keep running my pressure up. I'm on four pressure pills since this storm started."

Around the corner, Green's sister, Pamela Bienemy, has also run out of rebuilding money and doesn't blame the government either.

"You know they're trying," Bienemy said. "They can only do what they can do. It's up to us to do what we got to do."

Hundreds of residents of the ward turned out Monday to sing and pray for the people who didn't survive Katrina.         

But the tribute was also a rallying cry for the survival of that part of the city, an area still filled with homes tilted on their sides, crunched vehicles and shards of glass that have littered the streets for almost a year.

Some residents suspect Hurricane Katrina is being used as an excuse to permanently wipe out a poor, predominantly black neighbourhood that needs more than new homes to save it.   

The U.S. government is giving $110 billion to New Orleans to help it rebuild. The storm, estimated to have caused some $80 billion in damage, is considered to be the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history.

New storm looms

Forecasters believe Ernesto, which on Sunday grew into the season's first hurricane before weakening back to a tropical storm, will emerge with some force into the Gulf of Mexico later this week.

Ernesto continued Monday through the Caribbean and appears to most threaten southern and western Florida, a predication that seemed to shift New Orleans out of the expected U.S. danger zone.

With files from the Associated Press