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BATON ROUGE, La. — Military officials told President Bush today that the U.S. needs a national plan to coordinate search and rescue efforts following natural disasters or terrorist attacks. (snip) Bush got an update about the federal hurricane response from military leaders at Randolph Air Force Base. He heard from Lt. Gen. Robert Clark, joint military task force commander for Hurricane Rita, and Maj. Gen. John White, a task force member, who described search and rescue operations after Hurricane Katrina as a "train wreck." With Katrina, "we knew the coordination piece was a problem," White said. He said better coordination...

It was almost dawn. Patrick Hartman had not slept well. Hurricane Katrina was bearing down on New Orleans, but that's not what disturbed him. He had slept only fitfully since a traumatic shooting three years earlier — and so little these days that his mother feared he was clinically depressed. Weary and sleep-deprived, Hartman got up, ready to get to work. He was a New Orleans police officer. His regular shift wouldn't begin until 4 p.m., but he planned to leave around noon. He had been told that he would be part of a hurricane cleanup crew that evening, after...

PERSIAN GULF (NNS) -- Air and surface forces of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group are conducting Search and Rescue (SAR) operations in the Persian Gulf after a Sailor from the guided-missile cruiser USS Princeton (CG 59) was discovered missing Sept. 13. An immediate and thorough search aboard Princeton began after the Sailor failed to report for watch that morning. After the search of every space aboard the ship did not locate the Sailor, SAR operations began from the point of the ship’s position when the Sailor was last seen, combing the area for any sign of the Sailor. The Sailor...

As the pace of finding corpses slows, Mississippi is turning its attention to securing temporary housing for families left homeless by Hurricane Katrina. With more than 115,000 evacuees in shelters or temporary locations arranged by the Red Cross, and many more in hotels and private homes, Gov. Haley Barbour said the state is trying to obtain more temporary housing — an issue he raised with President Bush on Monday during Bush's third trip to the coast since Katrina struck. Barbour said later in Jackson that 1,250 trailers or mobile homes had arrived at a central staging area, 135 were ready...

NEW ORLEANS Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco lashed out at FEMA on Tuesday, complaining the agency is moving too slowly in recovering the bodies of those killed by Hurricane Katrina. The dead "deserve more respect than they have received," she said at state police headquarters in Baton Rouge. She said that the Federal Emergency Management Agency still has not signed a contract with the company hired to handle the removal of the bodies, Houston-based Kenyon International Emergency Services. Calls to a FEMA spokesman in New Orleans and the Homeland Security Department in Washington were not immediately returned.

BATON ROUGE, United States (AFP) - Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco has accused the federal government of moving too slowly to recover the bodies of hurricane victims, saying her state would hire a private company to do the work. ADVERTISEMENT "No one, it seems, even those at the highest level, seems to be able to break through the bureaucracy to get this important mission done," Blanco said as she met with state officials.

New Orleans -- A long caravan of white vans led by an Army humvee rolled Monday through New Orleans' Bywater district, a poor, mostly black neighborhood, northeast of the French Quarter. Recovery team members wearing white protective suits and black boots stopped at houses with spray painted markings on the doors designating there were dead bodies inside. Outside one house on Kentucky Street, a member of the Army 82nd Airborne Division summoned a reporter and photographer standing nearby and told them that if they took pictures or wrote a story about the body recovery process, he would take away their...

BATON ROUGE, United States (AFP) - Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco angrily accused the federal government of not moving fast enough to recover bodies of Hurricane Katrina's victims, and said the state would hire the private contractor doing the work to keep the job going. "No one, it seems, even those at the highest level, seems to be able to break through the bureaucracy ... I'm angry and outraged by this situation," Blanco said as she met with Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu and other statewide elected officials. She said she had pleaded with Michael Chertoff and other federal officials to issue...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050913/ts_nm/katrina_dead_dc_1;_ylt=A86.I0bIOidDI0EAAAEbLisB;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl Slowness of recovery of Katrina dead criticized September 13, 2005 BATON ROUGE (Reuters) - Louisiana's governor condemned the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Tuesday for moving too slowly to recover the dead from New Orleans and said she has signed a contract directly on behalf of the state with the recovery company originally hired by FEMA. "I have taken action today to resolve a matter that involves life, death and dignity," Kathleen Blanco told reporters and said she had expressed her "absolute frustration" with the pace of the recovery to federal authorities but to no avail. "I cannot stand...

CNN filed suit for right to cover search for bodies of Katrina victims HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- Rather than fight a lawsuit by CNN, the federal government abandoned its effort Saturday to prevent the media from reporting on the recovery of the dead in New Orleans. Joint Task Force Katrina "has no plans to bar, impede or prevent news media from their news gathering and reporting activities in connection with the deceased Hurricane Katrina victim recovery efforts," said Col. Christian E. deGraff, representing the task force. U.S. District Court Judge Keith Ellison issued a temporary restraining order Friday against a...

THE US military is to bar journalists and photographers from documenting the recovery of bodies left on the streets of New Orleans by hurricane Katrina. Lieutenant-General Russel Honore, the commander of the relief operation, said on Friday that while the military had allowed reporters covering the catastrophe free rein, it was now slamming the door shut out of respect for the possibly thousands of victims and their families. "We've had total access to everything we've done — the good, the bad and the ugly — but that operation (the recovery of corpses) will be conducted with dignity and respect for...

As many as 10,000 people were believed to be stubbornly staying put in the city, despite orders from the mayor earlier this week to leave or be removed by force. By midmorning, though, there were no reports of anyone being taken out forcibly, police said. Police are "not going to do that until we absolutely have to. We really don't want to do that at all," Deputy Chief Warren Riley said. Some residents who had previously refused to leave — whether because they wanted to protect their homes from looters, they did not want to leave their pets behind, or...

Anderson Cooper announced on CNN that a restraining order (1st Amendment) has been issued allowing reporters to meddle in the search for dead bodies.

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Soldiers and police confiscated guns from homeowners as they went house to house, trying to clear the shattered city of holdouts because of the danger of disease and fire. Police on Friday also marked homes with corpses inside, with plans to return later. As many as 10,000 people were believed to be stubbornly staying put in the city, despite orders from Mayor Ray Nagin earlier this week to leave or be removed by force. By midmorning, though, there were no immediate reports of anyone being taken out forcibly, police said. Police are "not going to do...

WASHINGTON, Sept 7 (Reuters) - When U.S. officials asked the media not to take pictures of those killed by Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, they were censoring a key part of the disaster story, free speech watchdogs said on Wednesday. The move by the Federal Emergency Management Agency is in line with the Bush administration's ban on images of flag-draped U.S. military coffins returning from the Iraq war, media monitors said in separate telephone interviews. "It's impossible for me to imagine how you report a story whose subject is death without allowing the public to see images of the subject...

Louisiana state senator Walter Boasso is praising the rapid response of rescuers who arrived in New Orleans to assist in saving trapped residents as the waters from the corrupted levees began to rise the day after Katrina. The surprising aspect of the senator's praise was the fact that he wasn't referring to the United States military or FEMA. He was praising the Canadians. The forty-six member Vancouver-based Urban Search and Rescue Team arrived in the St. Bernard Parish which lies east of New Orleans a full 5 days before American rescue units, and the volunteers worked 18-hour days rescuing 119...

Washington, September 8: To cope with the possibility of a huge death toll from Hurricane Katrina, some 25,000 body bags have been readied in New Orleans of Louisiana in United States, a health official said. Advertisement "It is my understanding that FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) has about 25,000 body bags on hand," Bob Johanssen of the state Department of Health and Hospitals said on Wednesday. Asked if authorities expected as many as 25,000 bodies, he said: we don't know what to expect. It means we're prepared."

Davis said Gator has been busy rescuing as many people as he can; when she spoke to him last, he had taken over 50 people into his home to give them food and shelter. He has pulled almost that many dead bodies out of the water and taken them to I-90, where he told Davis there were about 800 corpses lined up along the road for rescue workers to retrieve. It was 102 degrees when Davis got to speak to her brother and the mosquitoes and flies were eating the survivors alive.

RICHMOND, B.C. (CP) - The Vancouver-based Urban Search and Rescue Team - the first rescue team into Louisiana and the only Canadian contingent - arrived home Tuesday after completing its work in a flooded community near New Orleans. The exhausted 46-member crew, which had gone 30 hours without sleep, met briefly with the media at Vancouver International Airport before getting on a bus and heading home for some well-deserved rest. Team leader Brian Inglis said the group has waited several years for an opportunity to show its skills. "We've been waiting for this, a large deployment of the team, for...

It what appears almost like science fiction, Israeli volunteer divers are heading to New Orleans to help look for bodies in flooded homes. The divers are expected to sift through the murky waters with powerful underwater flashlights. US officials believe there may be hundreds or even thousands of dead bodies still trapped in houses. There is fear that the remains will also be found in the streets as the waters recede. They are part of a private delegation of Israeli volunteers who have extensive experience in rescues and complex emergencies garnered from work around the world. The delegation is being...