Federal officials urge delay in reopening New Orleans

Nagin said residents may return Monday to Algiers, a section of the city across the Mississippi River from downtown New Orleans that saw little damage from Hurricane Katrina. Over the next week and a half, Uptown, the Garden District and the French Quarter, the city’s historic heart, are also due to open to residents and businesses.

All are sections that didn’t flood, but Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, head of the federal government’s hurricane response, has urged Nagin not to rush people back into areas where basic services, such as drinkable water, telephone and 911, are still not in place.

Allen also expressed concerns that another storm, even something considerably smaller than Katrina, could cause the patchwork repairs to New Orleans’ levees to fail and bring another round of flooding. On Sunday, a new tropical storm called Rita formed southeast of the Florida Keys and appeared to be headed for the Gulf of Mexico, although forecasters did not expect it to hit the battered Gulf Coast.

Allen and Nagin planned to meet Monday to discuss the concerns.

The vice president of the national hospital accreditation organization also cautioned against reopening parts of the city, saying several hospitals probably were damaged beyond repair, while others may try to rush back into business before conditions are safe.

Others, while rebuilding, may lose doctors and nurses to communities elsewhere.

“Essentially the health care infrastructure of New Orleans is gone — it no longer exists,” said Joe Cappiello, who had just completed a three-day mission to the city for the Illinois-based Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

Although the city has more than a dozen hospitals, none has resumed normal operations. Officials at Children’s Hospital, which Nagin had hoped would be ready in time for the planned return of residents to the Uptown neighborhood, said they may need 10 more days to prepare.

The Garden District’s Touro Infirmary, one of the city’s largest hospitals, announced plans to reopen on Wednesday, when residents are due to start moving back there. That would make it the first to reopen since the storm. Cleaning crews were busy Sunday carting out debris and readying the hospital.

Some city residents have already returned and many said they met little resistance at checkpoints. Power is scheduled to return to the French Quarter by Friday and to Uptown by next Monday, a spokesman for Entergy New Orleans said.

In the New Orleans suburbs, a few gas stations were open in Matairie, along with a handful of coffee shops and burger joints.

Officials gave the all-clear for the return to neighboring Jefferson Parish on Sunday. “It feels good to come out again,” said Rolita Smith, 38, who ventured out to buy a bottle of whiskey for her cousin’s birthday.

Dr. Brobson Lutz, New Orleans’ former health director and an assistant coroner for Orleans Parish, said the hospitals clearly won’t be up to accreditation standards, but the city still needs them open as soon as possible.

“I don’t believe the people in New Orleans or the doctors give a hoot whether they accredit our hospitals or not,” Lutz said. “We need to have our emergency rooms open so that if people returning need emergency care for trauma or infections or other things, they can get it.”

Cappiello expressed concern that some hospitals, desperate to get back into business for competitive as well as public-service reasons, might move too quickly, before all mold and contaminants from flooding are removed.

“I hope there’s someone looking at all the health care assets and making sound decisions as the mayor faces overwhelming political pressure to let people back in,” he said.

Cappiello also said he had heard unconfirmed reports that some doctors may have euthanized some critically ill patients who could not be moved out, rather than leaving them to die from flooding or neglect.

“There was a whisper about that when we were down there,” he said. “It may prove to have some viability to it. Sometimes horrible decisions like that have to be made.”

The flooded areas of New Orleans continued shrinking over the weekend, but crews still searched by boat for the dead. The state Department of Health and Hospitals said the hurricane death toll in Louisiana had risen to 646. The toll across the Gulf Coast was 883.

Former President Bill Clinton, speaking on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday, directed some blame for the plight of the poor in New Orleans at the Bush administration.

“You can’t have an emergency plan that works if it only affects middle class people up, and when you tell people to go do something they don’t have the means to do, you’re going to leave the poor out,” Clinton said, referring to the fact that many poor people couldn’t evacuate before the storm because they lacked transportation.