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Bush tours Rita-damaged Texas, Louisiana
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YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSCAMERON, Louisiana (CNN) -- President Bush traveled to Texas and Louisiana on Tuesday to get a closer look at widespread devastation from Hurricane Rita, which virtually wiped out some coastal communities. As Bush's helicopter flew overhead, John LeBlanc, the assistant emergency preparedness director for Louisiana's Cameron Parish, said he would like to deliver a simple message to the president. "We need help. We need the same sort of help a big city like New Orleans is getting," LeBlanc said. Bush's helicopter made two passes at high altitude over Cameron, near the site of Hurricane Rita's weekend landfall, as part of his latest trip to the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast. The president toured battered towns in Texas with Gov. Rick Perry and met with Louisiana officials in Lake Charles, which suffered extensive damage when Rita struck with 120 mph winds on Saturday. Bush said victims of Hurricane Rita would be eligible for $2,000 per household in emergency aid, just as victims of Hurricane Katrina were offered after it hit southeastern Louisiana and Mississippi on Aug. 29. He acknowledged the frustrations of those who have been unable to return home but urged them not to return yet. "Now's not the time to come back until they get the utilities up and running, until they can get the sewers up and running and until they can get some water for people to drink," Bush said in an appearance with local officials, the heads of federal relief efforts and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Nine deaths have been blamed on Rita -- eight in Texas and one in Mississippi. That number grew Tuesday when authorities in Liberty County reported two more deaths -- two people killed when a house fell on them during the storm, Sheriff's Department Capt. Billy Tidwell said. Another 24 people died Friday -- before the storm hit -- when a bus evacuating nursing home residents caught fire on Interstate 45 south of Dallas. Perry urged residents of battered coastal towns who had evacuated to a "safe and comfortable" place to remain there until local authorities gave them the green light to return home. But some towns inland were struggling to accommodate the tens of thousands still displaced by the storm, which prompted mass evacuations in Houston and Galveston. Rita destroyed all but a handful of the buildings in Louisiana towns like Cameron, Holly Beach and Creole, and caused widespread flooding in the Texas refinery towns of Port Arthur and Beaumont, near the Louisiana state line. The president stood next to Perry as they met reporters in Beaumont. "I appreciate the planning that the governor has put into this," Bush said. "The state of Texas took precaution before the storm hit, and is now responding, and our job is to work with the state." (Watch Bush comments during hurricane-damage tour -- 2:30) Honore: 'I feel sorry for these people'Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who was in Louisiana's hard-hit southwestern parishes on Tuesday, said the city of Lake Charles in Calcasieu Parish had no electricity, water or sewer services. Phones only work periodically, he said, and thousands of abandoned cattle in the largely agricultural region are threatened. (Watch Gen. Honore update on Rita recovery -- 6:12) "There's a lot of animals out there that need to be saved -- and a lot of people who no longer have a home or a church or a school or a store or a pharmacy or a hospital to go to. That's what's on my mind right now," said Honore, who heads the military's hurricane response. "I feel sorry for these people, and these poor animals, we'll keep working with them, and our policy remains the same. We'll pick up pets, too. But our focus is getting the people where so they can get to the recovery stage and get the disaster relief centers open." Brown acknowledges mistakesMichael Brown, who resigned as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency under criticism for its handling of Hurricane Katrina, testified Tuesday before a congressional panel. (Watch congressman confront Brown -- 4:40) Brown acknowledged he made two mistakes after Katrina: not holding media briefings that would have required less of his time than responding to individual interview requests and not persuading Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to "sit down and coordinate their response." But Brown also praised his own experience and performance. "I've overseen over 150 presidentially declared disasters. I know what I'm doing, and I think I do a pretty darn good job of it," Brown said. (Full story) Navy hospital ship en routeThe floating hospital USNS Comfort made for New Orleans Tuesday to help provide medical resources as residents struggle to rebuild, senior military officials said. The Comfort is to join the military's combat-support hospital based at the New Orleans Convention Center, one of the city's few functioning medical facilities. Ship spokesman Lt. Bashon Mann said the Comfort will serve "primarily as an emergency trauma facility, since there are very few hospitals up and running at capacity" in the disaster zone. The ship and its nearly 600 medical and support personnel arrived at Pascagoula, Mississippi, on September 9. Fewer than 10 days later, after serving as sleeping quarters for hundreds of Katrina relief personnel, Comfort sailed into the open seas to avoid Rita. Copyright 2005 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report. 
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