New Orleans a ghost town for 9 months

New Orleans will have to be abandoned for at least nine months, and many of its people will remain homeless for up to two years, the US Government believes.

The bleak assessment will deepen the biggest crisis ever faced by President George W. Bush, who last week called the devastation of Hurricane Katrina a "temporary disruption".

As the relief effort finally got under way at the weekend for the tens of thousands of people left without food, water, medicine or the rule of law for five days, the federal official in charge of disaster recovery said reconstruction could not begin until next northern summer.

The President is now facing a political hurricane of his own, with criticism, even from inside his own party, for failing to heed warnings of the city's vulnerability, cutting spending on its defences to pay for the wars on terror and in Iraq, and responding sluggishly to the worst natural catastrophe to hit his country.

Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans - also under fire for poor leadership - said that every day of delay had caused hundreds of deaths. Louisiana's Republican Senator, David Vitter, gave the Bush Administration "an F grade" and Senator Chuck Hagel, a leading contender for the Republicans' nomination to succeed Mr Bush, said: "There must be some accountability".

The criticism is all the sharper because the President did nothing to alter his holiday schedule for 48 hours. Vice-President Dick Cheney remains on holiday in Wyoming and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice shopped for several thousand dollars of shoes and attended a Monty Python play, Spamalot in Manhattan as New Orleans drowned.

Dan Craig, director of recovery at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told diplomats that it could take up to six months to drain the city and allow it to dry out. Then debris and other hazardous material would need to be cleared away before rebuilding. Evacuees could be in Government housing for two years.

Officials say that the job of recovering, let alone counting, the dead may not start for weeks. The toll is likely to far exceed the numbers killed in the 9/11 attacks.

A Government exercise last year accurately predicted the disaster with the levees, funding for which Mr Bush drastically cut.

- INDEPENDENT