"NEW ORLEANS - After backing off on his call for some residents to return to New Orleans, the city's mayor ripped into the top U.S. government relief official on Tuesday, underscoring the rising tension between city and federal authorities over who has the final say after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.
The call for another evacuation ahead of a new tropical storm came after repeated warnings from top federal officials — including President Bush himself — that New Orleans was not safe enough to reopen. Federal officials warned that Tropical Storm Rita could breach the city’s weakened levees and swamp the city all over again.
Although Mayor Ray Nagin on Monday backed off his position to begin readmitting residents to parts of the city, the rift between local and federal officials appeared to widen.
On Tuesday, Nagin had harsh words for the federal government’s top official in the city, Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, who he said “stepped outside his lane by talking directly to the citizens of New Orleans.”
“I respect what federal officials are doing down here, but they do not fully comprehend what it’s like to lose your home, to lose everything and not know and to be sitting out there for three weeks. So I think it’s important for people to come back and at least take a look,” Nagin said on NBC’s “Today” show.
Nagin said he doesn’t believe officials will have to enforce the renewed evacuation order. But some business owners who started selling cleaning supplies and serving po’ boys said they wanted to stay put."
Nagin needs to shut the hell up. Not only was he negligent in failing to properly identify the residents of his city that required evacuation assistance, he failed transport them out of harms way.
Then after all the suffering, he attempts to move people back into a toxic wasteland simply for 'business purposes'. Incidentally, that's the reason Nagin delayed evacuation in the first place, business purposes.
He's all money and business - a dangerous combination for the people of New Orleans.
Filed under Katrina Rita disaster relief new orleans emergency response FEMA
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