Bush denies racial component to Katrina response after touring New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS -- President Bush rode in an open truck Monday for his first close-up look at New Orleans' ravaged, trash-strewn, flooded neighborhoods. He denied that poor, black victims of Hurricane Katrina were ignored because of their race.

After a federal response criticized as slow and inadequate, Michael Brown, the embattled director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, announced his resignation in Washington.

Polls show broad dissatisfaction with Bush's handling of the hurricane and his job approval rating is at the lowest point of his presidency. This was his third and longest trip here since Katrina pulverized Gulf Coast communities and submerged most of New Orleans two weeks earlier.

Many people, particularly in the black community, have suggested that one reason for the slow response was that most of the storm victims, especially in New Orleans, were poor and black and that the administration doesn't care about them. The president said that wasn't so.

"The storm didn't discriminate and neither will the recovery effort," he said. "When those Coast Guard choppers ... were pulling people off roofs, they didn't check the color of a person's skin. They wanted to save lives."

Before Monday, Bush had only seen New Orleans' deepest misery from the air -- from aboard Air Force on the way back to Washington from his Texas ranch and again from a helicopter two days after that. His only foray into the city was to one of the breached levees on its edge.

Other developments in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

* The Army Corps of Engineers says downtown New Orleans should be dried out by Oct. 2, and eastern parts of the city and St. Bernard Parish could be dry by Oct. 8.

* U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings says the hurricane displaced more than 247,000 public and private school students in Louisiana and more than 125,000 in Mississippi. There are no clear answers about who will pay to educate them.

* State and local officials report 515 deaths so far linked to Hurricane Katrina, 279 of them in Louisiana where searchers recovered more than 40 bodies from a flooded-out New Orleans hospital.

* The Coast Guard reopens the Mississippi River to 24-hour shipping, except in the 20 miles nearest its mouth. There, ships can still move only during daylight because so many navigation aids were blown away.