Five killed by Katrina's diseased waters

September 8, 2005 - 6:57AM

Disease brewed by Hurricane Katrina claimed its first victims officials said, as political polemics sharpened over the federal response to the country's worst natural disaster.

With the authorities working hard to empty New Orleans of water and the last diehard survivors, the crisis sparked by last week's storm that left thousands feared dead took on a new, worrying dimension.

Health authorities said five people evacuated from hurricane-battered areas of the Gulf Coast after Katrina struck had died after coming into contact with contaminated water.

Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the government Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said one case was reported this week in the state of Texas and others in Mississippi.

The five had been killed by vibrio vulnificus, "a bacteria that can enter somebody through a cut, a scratch or a wound," Skinner told AFP.

The elderly or those with a fragile immune system were most at risk.

The bacteria is related to cholera and was likely to kill again, Skinner said.

"There will be some more deaths associated with vibrio vulnificus in the affected areas, particularly New Orleans."

Doctors have been warning the Gulf Coast could become fertile terrain for cholera, malaria, typhoid, West Nile virus or other ailments. But no major outbreaks have been reported.

Nine days after Katrina struck, devastating an area the size of Britain and leaving this once-thriving jazz capital in chaos, a new poll signalled mounting problems for President George W Bush over his response.

The Gallup survey taken n Monday and yesterday found 42 per cent of Americans felt Bush had done a bad or terrible job of dealing with the storm and 35 per cent rated his performance good or great.

The findings came as congress launched investigations into the sluggish federal response to the disaster. Bush himself has acknowledged shortcomings and pledged to lead his own probe.

But Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, tipped as a potential candidate to succeed Bush, sharply rejected the president's bid to run his own probe and called for an independent inquiry.

Clinton is pushing for the creation of a "Katrina Commission" along the lines of the panel that issued a voluminous report on the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

"I think we sort of have lost track of the fact this is a government that has to be accountable to the people of our country," she told CNN. "This has to be a serious inquiry that people have confidence in."

New Orleans police prepared to forcibly remove stubborn hurricane survivors as the flood-wrecked city took its first faltering steps on the long and arduous road to recovery.

The fetid waters receded as army engineers got a few pumps up and running after closing the levee breach that triggered the flooding. Officials said 60 per cent of the city was underwater, down from 80 per cent last week.

But they said it could take close to three months to drain the city properly and Mayor Ray Nagin warned the country to brace for some shocking images as the gruesome human cost of Katrina was fully revealed.

"It's going to be awful and it's going to wake the nation up again," Nagin said, a day after he estimated the number of dead could reach as high as 10,000.

While morgue teams moved through the city collecting decomposed bodies, police officers and firefighters were given the green light to use force to bring remaining survivors from their homes and out of the city.

Just a few thousand of New Orleans's 485,000 resident remain, adamantly refusing to leave despite the warnings of serious health risks.

The holdouts have posed a problem for the authorities, who do not want to be seen manhandling people who have already endured terrible deprivation since Katrina hit just over a week ago.

"We want to encourage people to leave before the military takes over - they won't be so nice in making people leave," police officer Clay Caywood said.

Amid the trauma and misery, Nagin spoke of "rays of light" returning to New Orleans as it began to show signs of life amid relief operations that Senate budget officials said were costing $US1 billion ($A1.3 billion) dollars a day overall.

Order was basically restored to New Orleans, where survivors were terrorised by looters and armed thugs last week.

Authorities said they arrested 28 people overnight, bringing to 171 the number of people taken into custody for crimes ranging from looting to drugs, rape and shooting at police and evacuation helicopters.

But the long-term picture was still bleak, with officials pointing to the hurricane's disastrous environmental legacy - a sewage system in tatters, highly contaminated water supplies and oil slicks threatening wildlife.

Congressional budget forecasters said that Katrina could hit US growth by up to one percentage point and cause insurance losses to rival the September 11, 2001 attacks.

AFP

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