President Sees Progress in Recovery Effort

President Bush, making his third visit to areas in Louisiana and Mississippi devastated by Hurricane Katrina, said Monday that New Orleans was on the way to recovery and that there was now close coordination among all levels of government.

In comments after high-level briefings and a tour of some areas of New Orleans affected by the hurricane, the president alluded for the first time to the disproportionate number of African Americans stranded by the flooding in the city, and he vowed to look into growing concerns among homeowners who lacked flood insurance coverage.

Some residents of the Gulf Coast states are reporting that insurance adjusters are questioning whether their homes were damaged by flood or by wind. Flood damage is generally not covered by standard homeowners’ policies; wind damage often is.

Bush said Monday that he had encountered a woman facing such a predicament. After she told him of her situation and asked how he would feel, the president said, he told her, “I wouldn’t like it a bit.”

He also told her that he would “find out the process that determines whether or not it’s a wind or water event.”

Despite the progress in relief and recovery efforts that he noticed Monday -- Bush cited a gas station up and running in Gulfport, Miss. -- the president warned, “There’s a lot of serious and hard work that’s yet to be done.”

During a brief question-and-answer session with reporters, Bush was asked about the large numbers of blacks who were stranded in the Superdome and the convention center in New Orleans.

“My attitude is this: The storm didn’t discriminate, and neither will the recovery,” Bush replied. “When those Coast Guard choppers, many of whom were first on the scene, were pulling people off roofs, they didn’t check the color of a person’s skin. They wanted to save lives.”

He also reiterated his aversion to conduct an immediate review of the bureaucratic problems that left tens of thousands of the city’s residents stranded by the floodwaters, saying that the White House and Congress later would “take a good, close look at what went on, what didn’t go on.”

Such an assessment -- after the crisis has eased -- would help “answer the question: Are we prepared for major catastrophes?” Bush said. “If there were to be a biological attack of some kind, we’ve got to make sure we understand the lessons learned to be able to deal with catastrophe.”

The president once more dismissed a suggestion that the rescue efforts might have been hampered by a lack of military personnel because so many troops are in Iraq. “It is preposterous to claim that the engagement in Iraq meant there wasn’t enough troops here, just pure and simple,” he said.

Bush arrived in New Orleans late Sunday afternoon and spent the night aboard the Iwo Jima, a Navy amphibious assault ship docked on the Mississippi River. He returned to Washington on Monday evening after visiting Gulfport.