White House seeks billions in emergency funding for hurricane response

Federal agencies continued a massive rescue and recovery operation along the Gulf Coast Thursday in response to Hurricane Katrina as the White House planned to ask Congress for billions in emergency funding to support operations by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Criticism began to mount, however, that FEMA and the Homeland Security Department underestimated the hurricane's impact and did not have enough resources ready for recovery operations.

The death toll continued to climb as the government evacuated thousands of people from the Louisiana Superdome. But thousands more--mostly poor African Americans--remained stranded in other areas of New Orleans. According to CNN, dead bodies were in the street around the New Orleans Convention Center and most of the people near the building had no food or water.

The Coast Guard reported that it had rescued more than 3,000 people by Thursday afternoon.

President Bush and other officials defended federal relief operations, saying they are prioritizing resources. They said the government's top goal was to save lives, followed by getting food, water and medical care to those in need, and then beginning to assess damages and restore capacity to oil pipelines.

"This recovery is going to be a long process," Bush said. "It's going to take a lot of hard work and patience and resolve. It's also going to require a lot of money, and the federal government will do its part."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said emergency operations already had cost about $2 billion. According to media reports, the White House and congressional leaders were negotiating up to $10 billion in additional funding for FEMA. The House and Senate planned to reconvene early from their August recess either late Thursday or Friday to approve the emergency funding.

Chertoff said hundreds of thousands of people had been displaced by the storm.

FEMA Director Michael Brown said he was confident that agencies were "doing every single thing they can. "I think everyone in the country needs to take a big, collective deep breath," he said. "This is an ongoing disaster ... We will continue to meet every need that the states put upon us."

The White House also announced that the federal government will cover all costs for emergency operations in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama for the next two months.

National Guard troops continued to pour into the affected region Thursday, with more on the way. The National Guard said a total of 30,000 troops were being deployed to areas hit by the hurricane.

National Guard commander Maj. Gen. Steven Blum said the affected states will get all the troops they need for as long as they need them. He said Guard members from every state will go to the region at some point.

Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, commander of the Pentagon's Joint Task Force Katrina, said that by Friday, 8,600 Guard troops would be in Louisiana and 9,500 troops would be in Mississippi. He said the Guard plans to deploy a total of 12,000 troops to each of the two states within the next three days.

Some, however, began saying Thursday that the federal response has been too slow and too limited, and that officials in Washington are out of touch with the reality on the ground.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin issued "a desperate SOS," saying "the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe, and we are running out of supplies for [15,000 to 20,000] people."

Retired Maj. Gen. James "Spider" Marks charged in an interview on CNN that the overall federal response was lacking. "It clearly has not been quick enough in those areas that are most devastated," he said.

Chertoff offered assurances that the government had provided a "really exceptional response." But he said the disaster is unique because it involves not only devastation from the hurricane, but from flooding as well. He said flooding had wiped out transportation infrastructure and "dramatically impeded" response operations.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan deflected criticism by suggesting that detractors had political motives.

"This is not a time to get into any finger-pointing or politics or anything of that nature," he said. "And I think the last thing that the people who have been displaced or the people who have been affected need is people seeking partisan gain in Washington."

"There'll be a time for politics later; there'll be a time to look at all these other issues and do more of a critique or assessment of the response efforts," he added. "But right now, we're making sure that we're doing everything in our power to respond to this natural disaster."