FEMA Head Loses Relief Role

A week after President Bush hailed Federal Emergency Management Agency director Michael D. Brown for doing “a heck of a job,” Brown was ousted Friday as the administration’s point man for the Hurricane Katrina recovery effort and replaced by a Coast Guard vice admiral.

The shakeup came as federal mortuary teams began moving street by street in New Orleans in search of the dead, and as New Orleans officials said they would hold off using force to evacuate several thousand residents.

Authorities said police and military troops had sighted far fewer corpses than expected on a recent house-by-house evacuation operation -- a hopeful sign that perhaps vast numbers had not died, as had been feared.

“There’s nothing at all in the magnitude we anticipated,” said Maj. Gen. Bill Caldwell, commander of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.

Corpse recovery was no longer being directly overseen by Brown, whom Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff abruptly ordered back to Washington. Taking Brown’s place was Vice Adm. Thad W. Allen, the Coast Guard’s third in command.

Brown, who remains as FEMA’s administrator, has taken withering criticism over the Bush administration’s response to the hurricane.

Chertoff praised Brown, saying he had “done everything he possibly could to coordinate the federal response to this unprecedented challenge.”

During a briefing in Baton Rouge, La., attended by Brown and Allen, Chertoff was conspicuously silent about complaints by Gulf Coast public officials that Brown was ill-prepared for Katrina and responded poorly to the ensuing mass displacement. Chertoff also did not address reports of embellished credentials in Brown’s official government resume, which emerged hours before the sudden move.

White House officials said Bush planned a third tour of the flooded region Sunday. A week ago, during his first visit, Bush publicly backed Brown and dismissed criticism of him, saying: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

Bush made no reference Friday to Brown’s reassignment.

Democrats continued to call for Brown’s firing. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the FEMA director had not submitted his resignation and Bush had not requested it. “We are in a number of ways making changes and making adjustments to make sure where things aren’t working, that they are working,” McClellan said.

In another sudden shift, FEMA scrapped a 2-day-old program to distribute $2,000 debit cards to every adult displaced by the storm after it quickly became mired in chaos.

Cards were still being given to evacuees in Texas, but funds will be distributed elsewhere through direct bank deposits, FEMA officials said.

Democratic congressional leaders said Brown’s removal from the Katrina recovery effort was insufficient. “Hopefully, this will be the beginning, not the end, of changes in FEMA,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.).

As Allen took the reins of FEMA’s hurricane relief effort, he said the agency would jointly oversee the New Orleans search for bodies with the Department of Defense and military officers within the city.

“What we’re working on now is how to treat these remains with dignity and reunite them as quickly as possible with the families,” Allen said.

The government plans to block access to the mass corpse recovery. Last week, Chertoff said the American public needed to brace for “ugly” recovery scenes, but Allen and other military officials said Friday that reporters would not be allowed to accompany mortuary teams and document the process.

“There will be zero access to that operation,” said Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore, the Army commander of the 14,000 National Guard and 82nd Airborne troops in New Orleans. “You wouldn’t want to have pictures of people who are deceased shown on any media. Everybody knows it’s a horrific event.”

But late Friday, CNN obtained a federal restraining order preventing such a ban. CNN had filed suit earlier in the day in U.S. District Court in Houston, arguing that the decision by FEMA and New Orleans officials was an unconstitutional prior restraint, violating the 1st Amendment.

Louisiana’s death toll -- the count of bodies processed by forensics experts at a temporary warehouse morgue in the Metairie area -- was 118 Friday. In Mississippi, 211 deaths had been confirmed.

Despite concerns that Katrina’s floods and high winds killed thousands in New Orleans and neighboring Mississippi, Allen said Friday that “we really don’t know what we’ll encounter. There’s still a large amount of houses underwater.”

Terry J. Ebbert, a former Marine colonel who is head of emergency operations for New Orleans, said the low informal counts of the dead made during police and military sweeps this week gave him hope that “the catastrophic death count some people predicted may not have occurred.” New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, for example, had said he feared the toll would climb to 10,000.

The hunt for bodies is expected to last for weeks as law enforcement and federal units work methodically across the river city, armed with grid maps of every flooded neighborhood. Over the last few days, police and soldiers involved in search-and-rescue operations have been marking houses where they found corpses. Others used global positioning devices to pinpoint the location of bodies.

In some neighborhoods, maps were unnecessary. On Friday, a team of Marines in an amphibious tractor, or amtrac, were patrolling the lower 9th Ward, when they sighted five bodies, floating one after another in the water.

“Those poor people never had a chance,” said Sgt. Dale Gooden, 30, as the amtrac glided past shattered hulks of houses.

Several dozen bodies have been taken to a temporary morgue in a warehouse in St. Gabriel, near Metairie. Some were retrieved from city hospitals and from the Superdome and convention center, where tens of thousands of evacuees crowded last week. Others were hauled up from floodwaters and alleys.

Government engineers and public works officials said receding floodwaters now cover 40% of the city. High water continues to isolate much of the eastern part of the city, including the 7th Ward and parts of the lower 9th Ward.

The Army Corps of Engineers said it hoped to fill the last of three major breaches in the city’s reinforced levee system today. That 250-foot-wide breach -- along the London Avenue Canal on the north side of the city, connecting to Lake Pontchartrain -- is being filled with 7,000-pound sandbags dropped from National Guard helicopters. More than 2,000 bags had been lowered by Friday night.

“We are making progress,” said Jeff Richie, an Army Corps structural engineer directing much of the dike repair work. The two other main breaks -- on the Industrial Canal, and the primary breach on the 17th Street Canal to the west -- were patched this week.

The city will then focus on turning more pumps on in an attempt to “dewater” the city. Authorities will be able to drop water levels by as much as a foot a day once all pumps are working -- but that could take weeks, Richie cautioned.

Six pumps were operating Friday, officials said, and the water has dropped noticeably -- more than 4 feet in some areas. But few flooded neighborhoods are completely dried out, officials said.

“This morning, I walked all the way to the Superdome and the water was ankle-deep on the ramp,” Honore said.

His soldiers were on patrol Friday with New Orleans police, federal agents and sheriffs from around the country, trying to persuade stragglers to leave.

Ebbert, the New Orleans emergency chief, and other city officials said they had suspended plans to forcibly remove defiant residents, giving no reason for the change of plan. Police and troops were setting up checkpoints around New Orleans on Friday to ensure that evacuated residents did not try to slip back in. But “at this time, force is not being used to evacuate those persons already in the city,” said New Orleans City Atty. Sherry Landry.

Those who agreed to evacuate were taken to a reception area for weapons searches and medical checks, then put on buses bound for evacuation centers.

Army Capt. Troy Messel said military and police units had been gathering up more than 900 residents each of the last several days. Still, officials think that as many as 5,000 residents are eking out a clandestine existence, foraging for food, rigging electricity from generators and hiding from police.

Several evacuees said Friday that the search teams had not used physical force. But many said they felt intimidated by repeated visits by police and soldiers and, at times, by threats to forcibly remove them.

“I’m one of the diehards, but a soldier forced me on the boat,” said Wade Seals, 70, who was brought in from his house in the sodden 9th Ward. “I really don’t appreciate it. He didn’t touch me, but he ordered me on the boat and put his hand on a gun. I really had no choice.”

Another resident, Evelyn Morales, 49, said she felt she had no reason to stay in New Orleans after a police team took her grandchildren, ages 12, 11 and 9.

“They said they would take them on child welfare,” Morales said. “I wanted to stay. This is my home. I’ve been here 47 years. I feel my freedom has been stripped away, but I didn’t want my door broken down.”

Others felt simply worn down. Father Denzel Perera, 74, made an unlikely outlaw, but the parish priest said he had repeatedly refused requests to evacuate because he needed more time to repair flood damage at his church, Our Lady of the Rosary in the 9th Ward.

“The place really began to stink, and there were lots of flies,” Perera said. “There were bodies out there. Six days ago I rushed to the spot where one man died. I did the final blessing and absolution for him.

“We have documents and records and so on. I put them all away. I was the last to leave. All my parishioners left already, but I am ready now.”

Moore and Zucchino reported from New Orleans and Braun from Washington. Times staff writers Greg Miller, Scott Gold and Alan Zarembo in New Orleans, Warren Vieth in Washington and Matea Gold in New York contributed to this report.