45 Bodies Found At Flood Zone Hospital

NEW ORLEANS The bodies of 45 people have been found in a flooded uptown hospital, officials said Monday, sharply increasing the death toll from Hurricane Katrina and raising new questions about the breakdown of the evacuation system as the disaster unfolded.

Hospital officials said that at least some of the victims died while waiting to be evacuated in the four days after the hurricane struck, with the electricity out and temperatures rising to over 100.

Meanwhile, embattled Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Michael Brown resigned.

Steven Campanini, a spokesman for the hospital's owner, Tenet Healthcare, said the dead included not only patients who died while awaiting evacuation, but also people who died before the hurricane struck.

The dead may have also included evacuees from other hospitals and from the surrounding neighborhood who gathered at Memorial Medical Center for shelter or safety to await evacuation from the city.

Repercussions from Katrina also continued to echo in Washington, where Brown stepped down Monday. Brown was relieved of his role in the day-to-day disaster operations in the city three days ago.

The White House quickly named R. David Paulison to succeed Brown on an acting basis.

Paulison, a former firefighter, has been director of the agency's preparedness division for the past two years.

Gruesome Discovery

President Bush, meanwhile, toured the city's ghostly streets standing in the back of an open-air truck flanked by the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana, who have been sharply critical of the federal government's performance.

"It's very important for the folks in New Orleans to understand that, at least as far as I'm concerned, this great city has got ample talent and ample genius to set the strategy and set the vision," Bush said after his 40-minute tour with Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Ray Nagin. "Our role at the federal government is, you know, obviously within the law, to help them realize that vision. And that's what I wanted to assure the mayor."

But the discovery of the bodies on Sunday night at Memorial Medical Center, a 317-bed hospital in the city's uptown section, overshadowed talk about the future.

Armed National Guard troops guarded the entrance to the hospital and would not allow anyone inside. The bank of windows of the hospital's emergency room were shattered, lying near the stretchers and chairs inside. Pieces of plywood covered broken windows as high as the hospital's top floor, eight stories above.

Cars in the parking lot were caked with grime from the floodwaters. The area surrounding the hospitals, however, was dry.

Campanini, the hospital spokesman, said Tenet Healthcare did not know how many of the 45 deceased were patients and how many had gathered there for shelter or safety.

The hospital had begun stocking food and supplies and transferring patients to other hospitals before the hurricane hit, he said. But it still had 115 patients by the Tuesday after the storm hit, when the levees broke and water began flooding the city.

With private helicopters and help from the Coast Guard and the New Orleans Fire Department, the hospital evacuated 2,000 people, including most of the patients, he said.

Campanini stopped short of blaming the authorities, but he said the need for evacuation was well known.

"There were reports across the entire New Orleans and Biloxi area that there were frail and elderly patients who were not surviving," he said.

Robert Johannessen, a spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said it had confirmed 45 bodies were found inside Memorial Hospital, but he said he could not confirm Campanini's account of how they died.

He said the circumstances of the deaths still were under investigation.

The discovery of the bodies elevated the statewide death toll from Hurricane Katrina to 279; of those, 242 were from the New Orleans metro area.

The president's tour passed by smashed cars, tree branches and rubble and through areas that still had about 6 inches of water in the street.

For most of the ride, Blanco, Bush and Nagin stood in an open military truck and had to occasional duck under low wires and branches. At one point, Coast Guard Vice Adm. Thad Allen, who replaced Brown last week as head of hurricane relief, removed his Coast Guard cap to shield Bush from a wire.

Recovery Work Continues

Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport, which resumed running commercial flights at the end of last week, expects to return to its regular flight schedule in two weeks, said Joe Spraggins, head of emergency management for Harrison County, Miss.

Delta, Northwest and Airtran will begin operating in a limited capacity today, he said. Northwest Airlines said it would resume scheduled commercial air service to Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport on Wednesday, with its first flight into the airport in 10 days scheduled to arrive at 10:44 a.m. from Memphis, Tenn.

Work began Monday on the hurricane-damaged Twin Span Bridge on Interstate 20, which connects New Orleans and Slidell, La.

In Washington, the Senate's two top tax writers proposed a series of changes intended to lower the tax liability of individuals and businesses affected by the storm and to encourage greater charitable contributions of food and books and gifts from corporations.

The package of tax incentives, estimated to cost $5 billion to $7 billion over five years, was described as a short-term plan that the authors would like to see approved this week with more substantive changes to come.

Among the proposals were one that would drop the 10 percent penalty on early withdrawal of retirement funds for those in the region and another that would allow a higher personal exemption for those who take in evacuees.