WASHINGTON, Sept. 6 - As President Bush battled criticism over the response to Hurricane Katrina, his mother declared it a success for evacuees who "were underprivileged anyway," saying on Monday that many of the poor people she had seen while touring a Houston relocation site were faring better than before the storm hit.
"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio program "Marketplace." "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway," she said, "so this is working very well for them."
Mrs. Bush toured the Astrodome complex with her husband, former President George Bush, as part of an administration campaign throughout the Gulf Coast region to counter criticism of the response to the storm. Former President Bush and former President Bill Clinton are helping raise money for the rebuilding effort.
White House officials did not respond on Tuesday to calls for comment on Mrs. Bush's remarks.
Posted Wednesday, Sep. 07, 2005 On Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt announced the creation of a joint task force to answer the question "When will New Orleans be safe to reinhabit?" The group will consist of experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy as well as local and state health officials. Here's a look at issues and concerns they have to work through before declaring New Orleans safe for human habitation.
Dead bodies. Let's get one thing straight: dead bodies from a natural disaster don't typically cause disease. Yes, it is horrible to see corpses submerged in the floodwaters of New Orleans, washed up in the woods of Mississippi and crushed under obliterated homes all along the Gulf Coast. But as disasters around the world have taught us over the years, the threat of disease comes not from the dead but from the living.
Infectious Disease. The major concerns at present are diarrhea and respiratory infections. Doctors, nurses and other medical personnel are working to keep those problems under control in shelters throughout the region. But medical teams will need to keep a close eye on the work crews that are clearing debris, pumping out flood water and searching through the mud and sludge.
One disease that's typically associated with severe flooding but is generally overlooked in the U.S. is leptospirosis, according to Dr. Clarence J. Peters, director for biodefense at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Leptospirosis is caused by bacteria that normally infect rats and dogs. The bacteria doesn't cause major problems in these animals but is excreted in their urine. This becomes a problem, ironically, as floodwaters recede, leaving behind pools of water where the animals urinate. The bacteria infect humans through intact skin or cuts and wounds, causing fever and vomiting. It is sometimes mistaken for hepatitis but unlike hepatitis, can be cured with antibiotics.
Despite what you may have read or heard, there are no cases of cholera on the Gulf Coast. As many as five people have died from what appears to be an infection with Vibrio vulnificus. This bacteria occurs naturally in the waters of the Gulf Coast and is responsible for as many as 35 deaths a year in the U.S.—most often from eating raw seafood in the summer months. V. vulnificus comes from the same biological group as the cholera-causing pathogen but is nowhere near as deadly. Healthy people are generally able to withstand the infection, which is treated with antibiotics.
Chemicals and Heavy Metals. There's been a lot of concern about petrochemical plants leaking into the floodwater. But generally speaking, large petrochemical companies know where their plants are and have the personnel to assess and address any problems. The more difficult issue may well be with the hundreds, if not thousands, of smaller sources of contamination, like gasoline stations, pesticide stores and residential garages filled with cleaning solutions and who knows what else.
Gasoline from submerged cars and gas stations will probably evaporate in a few weeks, says John Ward, deputy director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Science Center at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. He's more concerned about local pockets of mercury, lead, chromium and arsenic that may have contaminated soil and water after being tipped over or displaced from storage containers.
Water. New Orleans gets its drinking water from the Mississippi River, which should have flushed itself of any floodwaters by now—leaving aside, for the moment, the preflood issues of agricultural and industrial contaminants. The treatment plants, pumping stations, underground pipes and mains are, of course, a different story. The first order of business will be repressurizing the system so that water leaks out, not in. Then tests of water quality will tell engineers where they have to concentrate their cleanup, flushing and rebuilding efforts.
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