New Orleans

Christmas is bittersweet this year for thousands of New Orleans residents still homeless four months after their city was ravaged by Hurricane Katrina. For three generations of women fending off the cold outside their uninhabitable brick home, the past seems brighter than the future.

Nobody knows how long Deborah ”Bodie” Fisher (85) had been trapped in her home with the corpse of her younger sister, Delia ”Sis” Holloway (82), upstairs and 60cm of flood water downstairs when help finally floated by on September 2. We’ll return for your sister’s body, the rescuers said. Two months on she was still in the house.

The last time Don Glossop saw his customers, they were ritually burning green candles, hoping voodoo would pierce the federal bureaucracy and hasten the arrival of desperately needed relief cheques. Glossop’s shop, New Orleans Mistic, has been closed since Hurricane Katrina swamped New Orleans two months ago, and most of his clients have scattered across the country.

The discarded refrigerators have dotted the wealthiest and poorest neighbourhoods for weeks like fly-infested tombstones, some sealed with duct tape yet secreting foul odours. They are more than an eyesore. Authorities say the appliances pose health and environmental risks.

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin is inviting residents of his hurricane-wracked city to return by next week, as hundreds of thousands remained homeless along the Gulf of Mexico. ”Come in, inspect your property, if you want to stay, you’re free to stay,” Nagin said on Wednesday.

Storm-weary residents prepared to flee devastated New Orleans on Wednesday as powerful Hurricane Rita threatened the United States Gulf Coast three weeks after Katrina’s deadly passage. US meteorologists upgraded Rita early on Wednesday to a powerful category-three category on the five-level hurricane-intensity scale.

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin on Monday suspended the return of the stricken city’s population as a new storm bore down on the coast devastated by Hurricane Katrina. At the same time, authorities in Florida ordered the evacuation of several islands in the Keys chain off the south coast because of Tropical Storm Rita.

United States President George Bush was to head back to storm-wracked New Orleans on Thursday as his popularity plumbed new lows and the death toll from Hurricane Katrina rose further. Bush was to make a prime time speech to spell out long-term plans for rebuilding the three Gulf of Mexico states — Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi — that were pummelled by the hurricane.

United States President George Bush prepared to give a speech in Louisiana on Thursday outlining government plans to rebuild the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina, as the disaster death toll passed the 700 mark. Meanwhile, the south-eastern US coastline was hit by another hurricane, Ophelia.

United States President George Bush denied on Monday there was any racial component to people being left behind after Hurricane Katrina, despite suggestions from some critics that the response would have been quicker if so many of the victims hadn’t been poor and black.

United States President George Bush faced an uncertain welcome on Monday as he prepared for his first close-up view of storm-wrecked New Orleans, two weeks to the day after Hurricane Katrina turned one of the country’s proudest cities into a swamped horror.

A horrific glimpse of Hurricane Katrina’s wrath emerged on Thursday, as more than 30 patients were reportedly found dead in a suburban New Orleans nursing home overcome by floods. The grim discovery is likely the first of many awaiting rescuers scouring ravaged areas for bodies.

United States authorities stepped up efforts to empty the hurricane-stricken city of New Orleans on Thursday, sending in thousands of troops to confront rampaging looters. President George Bush vowed ”zero tolerance” for armed gangs and other profiteers from the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina.

Hurricane Katrina smashed into the United States Gulf Coast near New Orleans on Monday, trapping hundreds of people in their flooded homes and leaving a trail of devastation across the southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The hurricane killed at least 54 people in Mississippi, a local newspaper reported on Tuesday.

Hurricane Katrina pounded vulnerable New Orleans with howling winds on Monday, damaging the roof of the Superdome stadium where thousands had sought refuge, knocking out power, flooding streets and threatening a wide swath of the United States Gulf Coast.

Fear ripped through the largest emergency shelter in New Orleans on Monday as rain from Hurricane Katrina seeped through the roof of the Superdome sports arena. ”The Superdome management assured us this would be the safest place in New Orleans,” a clearly shaken reporter told a local radio station.

Hurricane Katrina claimed its first victims in Louisiana early on Monday as it dumped torrential rain on the southern state and other parts of the United States Gulf of Mexico coast, threatening death and massive destruction. Although slightly weaker, the monster storm forced tens of thousands of New Orleans residents to flee the city.