The toll of Hurricane Katrina deaths in four American states has risen to 513, after Mississippi announced a further four deaths on Monday.
Mississippi’s death toll rose to 218 from 214, the office of Governor Haley Barbour announced.
The official toll from Hurricane Katrina in and around the ravaged city of New Orleans, Louisiana, also jumped on Monday to 279 from 197 a day earlier, state officials said.
The spike in New Orleans’s confirmed deaths came as the authorities continue to drain the city of floodwaters sparked by the vast August 29 storm that laid waste to large parts of the United States Gulf Coast and many coastal communities.
The city’s revised toll included the discovery of 45 bodies at the Memorial Medical Centre hospital.
The total number of deaths attributed to Katrina now stands at 279 in Louisiana, 218 in Mississippi, two in Alabama and 14 in Florida, according to official tolls.
Despite the rising toll, the hundreds confirmed killed so far fall well short of initial predictions that up to 10 000 may have been claimed by the storm’s winds and floods.
More storm trouble brewing
Meanwhile, another storm, Ophelia, inched toward the US east coast on Monday, prompting authorities to post storm warnings, ready troops and urge residents to leave isolated islands.
The National Hurricane Centre (NHC) issued a warning for a 440km stretch from Edisto Beach, South Carolina, to Cape Lookout in North Carolina — an arc of coastline that is home to hundreds of thousands of people. Forecasters predicted landfall on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Ophelia was downgraded to a tropical storm early on Monday, but the centre said the storm could pick up force on Tuesday and become a category-one hurricane again.
Its slow pace and broad reach — winds extending up to 256km from its centre — could cause headaches.
”We have the unpleasant possibility that the cyclone could linger near the south-east United States through five days,” said Richard Pasch, meteorologist for the NHC.
The Governor of North Carolina, Mike Easley, declared a state of emergency, ordering the mobilisation of 200 National Guard troops and the evacuation of coastal islands. The governor warned citizens to brace for a storm that would last for 24 hours or more.
”I urge citizens to take necessary precautions to keep their families safe,” Easley said. ”This storm is moving slowly, which means that we will feel its effects for a longer time.”
The federal government, lashed by a storm of criticism for its slow response to Katrina, announced that relief supplies have been positioned at strategic points on the US east coast and that emergency personnel are standing by, well in advance of Ophelia’s landfall.
”The federal government is coordinating closely with state and local officials and emergency management personnel to maximise readiness and response efforts and to provide any assistance requested by the states,” the US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Monday.
At 9pm GMT, Ophelia swirled in the Atlantic about 265km east of Charleston, South Carolina.
Tropical storm-force winds extended outward up to 257km from the centre.
”Ophelia is nearly stationary and a very slow north-westward motion is expected today,” the NHC said. — Sapa-AFP