New Orleans remembers dead on Katrina anniversary

NEW ORLEANS, Aug 29 (Reuters) New Orleans rang bells and threw wreaths of remembrance into its waterways today to mark the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the powerful storm that devastated the historic city and killed more than 1,400 people.

Memorial events took place across the US Gulf Coast where Katrina came ashore on August 29, 2005 and caused an estimated 80 billion dollars in damage in the costliest US natural disaster.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin choked with emotion at a groundbreaking ceremony for a memorial to the Katrina dead.

Nagin and US Army Gen Russel Honore, who ran the Katrina military relief effort, rang bells, as did many of the 200 people attending the ceremony, at 9:38 am, the moment Katrina's massive storm surge broke through levees and flooded the low-lying city.

''We move on and we fight for the existence of this city,'' Nagin said. ''And as we recover, we're never ever, ever going to forget those who lost their lives, who couldn't leave or wouldn't leave or got trapped.'' ''We ring the bells for hope that the promise that was made in Jackson Square will become a reality and restore confidence in government at all levels,'' he said in an apparent dig at President George W Bush, who was in town with first lady Laura Bush to mark the anniversary.

Bush famously made a nationally televised speech from Jackson Square in the French Quarter promising federal aid after days of chaos in the flooded city.

Many feel he did not deliver because New Orleans still has only 60 percent of its pre-storm population and thousands of homes and buildings sit damaged and deserted.

Bush, in remarks at a newly reopened school in the Lower Ninth Ward, the impoverished neighborhood that was wiped out by the storm, defended the government's performance.

''COMING BACK'' He said 114 billion dollars in federal money had been allocated to the storm-stricken area and New Orleans looked much better than it did on his previous visits.

''This town is coming back, this town is better today than it was yesterday and it's going to be better tomorrow than it was today,'' Bush said.

''It's one thing to come give a speech in Jackson Square, it's another to keep paying attention whether or not progress is being made. And I hope people understand we do, we're still paying attention,'' he said.

He was to go on to neighboring Mississippi, whose coastal towns were badly damaged by Katrina and are still recovering, before returning to Washington later in the day.

At the 17th Street Canal in the hard-hit Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans, city Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell threw a wreath with white and yellow flowers into the still waters that two years ago raged through the city.

The canal is contained by floodwalls that, like others in the Ninth Ward and elsewhere, failed when Katrina's surge filled them water from Lake Pontchartrain.

After the storm, it was found that the levee system had been poorly constructed. Breaks in the protection caused water to flow in and flood 80 per cent of the city. Many residents who did not evacuate were trapped in their attics and on their roofs as the waters rose.

''In memory, let's ring our bells at 9:38 when our levees broke, a man-made catastrophe,'' Hedge-Morrell said.

Nagin gave a 1 million dollars check from the city to help build the Katrina memorial, which will be a series of walkways in the spiral form of a hurricane and will include a mausoleum for the unclaimed bodies of more than 100 Katrina victims.

Sandra Brown, 62, who lives in the area where the memorial will be constructed, said she went to the groundbreaking ceremony to remember the dead.

''I'm sad because the neighborhoods haven't progressed too much and I'm saddened by the loss of lives. Overall, it's a sad day,'' she said.

Reuters SY GC2340