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Hurricane Katrina

Bush: 'I take responsibility'

The president says Katrina showed "serious problems" in the government's ability to respond to a crisis.

By wire services
Published September 14, 2005

WASHINGTON - President Bush for the first time took responsibility Tuesday for federal government mistakes in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and suggested the calamity raised broader questions about the government's ability to handle both natural disasters and terror attacks.

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at a joint White House news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

"And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong," Bush said.

It was the closest Bush has come to publicly faulting any federal officials involved in the hurricane response, which has been criticized as disjointed and slow.

Also Tuesday:

--Katrina's death toll in Louisiana climbed to 423, up from 279 a day before, the state Health Department said. The jump came as recovery workers turned more and more of their attention to gathering up and counting the corpses in a city all but emptied of the living.

Mayor Ray Nagin said earlier this month that New Orleans could have 10,000 dead. But a street-by-street sweep of the city last week yielded far fewer bodies than feared, and authorities said the toll could be well below the dire projections.

--The husband-and-wife owners of a nursing home near New Orleans were charged Tuesday with negligent homicide in the deaths of 34 people during the flooding unleashed by Hurricane Katrina. The case represents the first major prosecution to come out of the disaster.

The owners of St. Rita's Nursing Home in Chalmette "were asked if they wanted to move (the patients). They did not. They were warned repeatedly that this storm was coming," Louisiana Attorney General Charles Foti said.

Salvador A. Mangano and his wife, Mable, surrendered and were jailed on 34 counts of negligent homicide. Each count carries as much as five years in prison.

The victims at St. Rita's died Aug. 29, the day the hurricane hit, and on Sept. 6, at least 14 unrecognizable bodies were still inside the nursing home, the New York Times reported last week.

The Manganos' attorney, Jim Cobb, said Tuesday night that his clients are innocent, and he blamed St. Bernard Parish officials for not ensuring an evacuation plan was proceeding.

The Manganos had an evacuation plan as required under state law, both their attorney and the attorney general said.

Foti said the nursing home had a contract with an ambulance service to evacuate the patients, but the owners didn't call the company. They also turned down an offer from St. Bernard Parish officials who asked if the nursing home wanted help evacuating, he said.

Tom Rodrigue, whose mother died in the nursing home, was near tears during an interview Tuesday.

"She deserved the chance, you know, to be rescued instead of having to drown like a rat," he told CNN.

--In New Orleans, there were both positive and negative developments Tuesday. New Orleans airport reopened to commercial flights, the port resumed operations and the mayor said dry sections of the ravaged city - including the French Quarter and the central business district - could be reopened during the daytime as early as Monday, provided the Environmental Protection Agency finds the air and water are safe.

The Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, which escaped widespread damage from Katrina but was reserved for humanitarian flights in the storm's aftermath, received its first commercial arrival Tuesday, a flight with about two dozen emergency workers and returning residents.

However, the mayor also said the city is broke and unable to make its next payroll.

Nagin said the city was working "feverishly" with banking and federal officials to secure lines of credit through the end of the year.

--In a sign that initial rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina are coming to an end, Pentagon officials said late Tuesday that about 4,000 active-duty personnel, two large Navy vessels and three dozen helicopters ordered into the relief effort would return to their regular duties.

At the same time, officials said a sizable active-duty contingent remained, the approximately 5,200 ground soldiers drawn from the 82nd Airborne Division and the 1st Cavalry Division.

Back in Washington, as he accepted responsibility for the slow federal response Tuesday, the president scheduled a speech to the nation from Louisiana for Thursday evening. It will be his fourth trip to the devastated Gulf Coast since the storm struck two weeks ago.

The speech will include an appeal for Americans to "come together to support people who have been affected by this massive catastrophe," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., said she welcomed Bush's Tuesday comments. "Accountability at every level is critical, and leadership begins at the top," she said.

And Louisiana's Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of moving too slowly in recovering the bodies. The dead "deserve more respect than they have received," she said at state police headquarters in Baton Rouge.

However, Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman David Passey pointed out that the state of Louisiana had asked to take over body recovery last week. Passey said he did not understand the governor's remarks.

"The collection of bodies is not normally a FEMA responsibility," he said.

Meanwhile, R. David Paulison, in his first full day on the job as acting FEMA director, told reporters in Washington the government would step up its efforts to find more permanent housing for the tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina survivors now in shelters.

"We're going to get those people out of the shelters, and we're going to move and get them the help they need," Paulison said.

Bush selected him to replace Michael Brown, who resigned on Monday after being recalled as the top onsite disaster-relief coordinator. Brown, a Republican lawyer with little previous disaster-management experience, drew fierce criticism for his handling of the crisis.

Paulison, a career firefighter with 30 years of rescue experience, said he was busy "getting brought up to speed."

Bush promised him "the full support of the federal government," Paulison said.

The storm displaced an estimated 1-million people, destroyed large areas of cities and communities and heavily damaged roads, bridges, canals and oil and natural gas facilities.

Bush's acceptance of responsibility came in response to a reporter's question on whether the United States was capable of handling another terrorist attack, given its criticized response to Katrina.

"That's a very important question," Bush said. "And it's in our national interest that we find out exactly what went on - so that we can better respond."

"I'm not going to defend the process going in, but I am going to defend the people who are on the front line of saving lives," he added. "I also want people in America to understand how hard people are working to save lives down there in not only New Orleans, but surrounding parishes and along the Gulf Coast."

Stephen Hess, professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, said presidents historically have been reticent to acknowledge mistakes.

"This is not a full-fledged mea culpa. But by presidential standards, it's there, or pretty close to it," Hess said.

--Information from the Associated Press and New York Times was used in this report.

[Last modified September 14, 2005, 07:02:08]