New Orleans mayor postpones the opening of the city due to risk of flood

NEW ORLEANS -- Under pressure from President Bush and other top federal officials, the mayor of New Orleans suspended the reopening of large portions of the city Monday and instead ordered nearly everyone out because of the risk of a new round of flooding from a tropical storm on the way.\n"If we are off, I'd rather err on the side of conservatism to make sure we have everyone out," Mayor Ray Nagin said.\nThe announcement came after repeated warnings from top federal officials -- and the president himself -- that New Orleans was not safe enough to reopen. Among other things, federal officials warned that Tropical Storm Rita could breach the city's temporarily patched-up levees and swamp the city all over again.\nThe news came as the state Health Department raised the death toll from Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana by 90 to 736. The toll across the Gulf Coast was 973.\nThe mayor reversed course even as residents began trickling back to the first neighborhood opened as part of Nagin's plan, the lightly damaged Algiers section.\nThe mayor said he had wanted to reopen some of the city's signature neighborhoods over the coming week in order to reassure the people of New Orleans that "there was a city to come back to." He said he had strategically selected ZIP codes that had suffered little or no flooding.\nBut "now we have conditions that have changed. We have another hurricane that is approaching us," Nagin said. He warned that the city's pumping system was not yet running at full capacity and that the levees were still in a "very weak position."\nHe ordered residents who circumvented checkpoints and slipped back into the officially closed parts of the city to leave immediately. Those areas include the historic French Quarter, the Garden District, Uptown and the central business district.\nNagin also urged everyone already settled back into Algiers to be ready to evacuate as early as Wednesday.\nTropical Storm Rita was headed toward the Florida Keys and was expected to become a hurricane, cross the Gulf of Mexico and reach Texas or Mexico by the weekend. But forecasters said it could also veer in Louisiana's direction.\n"We're watching Tropical Storm Rita's projected path and, depending on its strength and how much rain falls, everything could change. Residents moving into the area may have to evacuate again," said Col. Duane Gapinski, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers task force that is draining New Orleans and repairing the levees.\nUnder the mayor's plan, Algiers opened Monday, and Uptown, the Garden District and the French Quarter were supposed to reopen one ZIP code at a time between Wednesday and next Monday, bringing about 180,000 of New Orleans' half--million inhabitants back.