Refugees from Hurricane Katrina who sought safety in the New Orleans Superdome will be taken by bus to the Astrodome in Houston under a plan worked out by state, federal and other rescue agency officials, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said today.
The refugees will make the 350-mile trip from New Orleans to Houston on 475 buses provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the governor said. The Astrodome will be available to house them at least until December, and longer, if necessary. He also said he would open the doors to Texas' public schools to children from out of state whose families were left homeless by the storms.
"By the grace of God, we could be the ones who have this extraordinary need," Mr. Perry said. "This happened hundreds of miles to our west; these are our neighbors. These are people in need and Texas is going to do everything we can in our power to help."
"We're going to get through this together as one American family," he said.
As officials continue to work on more ways to alleviate the overwhelming destruction wrought by the storm, President Bush is to meet today with a task force he established to coordinate the efforts of 14 federal agencies that will be involved in responding to the disaster.
The president, who cut short his vacation in Texas by two days because of the storm, returned to Washington today. Agence France-Presse reported that Air Force One flew descended to 5,000 feet along the Gulf Coast on its way back to Washington so that Mr. Bush could survey the damage.
In the flooded and battered city of New Orleans, search and rescue teams in helicopters and boats were still looking for survivors , and officials said today that it could be months before residents would be allowed to return to their homes.
As floodwaters continue to rise in the city, officials also wrestled with ways to repair two breaches that developed on Tuesday in levees that were holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain.
Workers for the Army Corps of Engineers today continued to drop 3,000-pound sandbags to try to close the 500-foot gap that developed on Tuesday in the levee. But agency officials that they were having trouble getting needed equipment to the work sites because many bridges and roads were destroyed during the storm.
"The challenge is an engineering nightmare," Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said on ABC's "Good Morning America."
The Superdome's roof suffered damage during the storm, and rising waters around the arena have left thousands of refugees huddled in increasingly grim conditions as water and food dwindle and floodwaters threaten the generators.
Swaths of the roof had been peeled away by the powerful winds, and it was stifling inside without air-conditioning. Toilets were reported to be overflowing. A woman with an 18-month-old baby said her last bottle of baby formula was nearly empty.
During the day, additional survivors were deposited at the Superdome by rescuers, but the absence of food and power, not to mention the water lapping at the doors, made their continued stay perilous.
The mayor estimated it would be one to two weeks before the water could be pumped out. Another city official said it would be two months before the schools reopened.
Tens of thousands of people are expected to need temporary homes for indefinite durations. The authorities were looking at renting apartments, putting people up in trailers and establishing floating dormitories.
Late on Tuesday, the Pentagon ordered five Navy ships and eight Navy maritime rescue teams to the Gulf Coast to bolster relief operations. It also planned to fly in Swift boat rescue teams from California.
As rising water and widespread devastation hobbled rescue and recovery efforts, the authorities could only guess at the death toll in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast. In Mississippi alone, officials raised the official count of the dead to at least 100.
"It looks like Hiroshima is what it looks like," Gov. Haley Barbour said, describing parts of Harrison County, Miss.
Across the region, rescue workers were not even trying to gather up and count the dead, officials said, but pushed them aside for the time being as they tried to find the living.
The scope of the catastrophe caught New Orleans by surprise. A certain sense of relief that was felt on Monday afternoon, after the eye of the storm swept east of the city, proved cruelly illusory, as the authorities and residents woke up Tuesday to a more horrifying result than had been anticipated. The Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, lamented that while the city had dodged the worst-case scenario on Monday, Tuesday was "the second-worst-case scenario."
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