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      New Orleans (AP) -- Five years after Hurricane Katrina's wrath,
President Barack Obama sought to reassure disaster-weary Gulf Coast
residents Sunday that he would not abandon their cause.

      "My administration is going to stand with you, and fight
alongside you, until the job is done," Obama said to cheers at
Xavier University, a historically black, Catholic university that
was badly flooded by the storm.


      The president said there are still too many vacant lots,
trailers serving as classrooms, displaced residents and people out
of work. But he said New Orleanians have shown amazing resilience.


      "Because of you," the president declared, "New Orleans is
coming back."


      Obama spoke five years to the day from when Hurricane Katrina
roared onshore in Louisiana, tearing through levees and flooding 80
percent of New Orleans. More than 1,800 people along the Gulf Coast
died, mostly in Louisiana.


      Even as the region struggled to put despair behind it, hardship
struck again this year in the form of the BP oil spill. More than
200 million gallons of oil surged into the Gulf of Mexico before
the well was capped in mid-July. New Orleans' economy, heavily
dependent on tourism and the oil and gas industry, was set back
anew.


      Standing in front of a large American flag with students arrayed
behind him, Obama boasted of his administration's efforts to
respond to the Gulf spill, saying one of his promises - to stop the
leak - has been kept.


      "The second promise I made was that we would stick with our
efforts, and stay on BP, until the damage to the Gulf and to the
lives of the people in this region was reversed," Obama said.
"And this, too, is a promise we will keep."


      But Obama's speech didn't offer any new plans for restoring the
Gulf, bringing New Orleans' fast-disappearing wetlands back to life
or cleaning up BP's spilled oil. Some residents had hoped Obama
would take the opportunity to announce an early end to the
deepwater drilling moratorium he enacted after the spill. But he
made no mention of the moratorium, which people here say is costing
jobs.

      Obama did offer a list of accomplishments on Katrina recovery he
said his administration has achieved, including helping move
residents out of temporary housing, streamlining money for schools
and restoration projects, and working to rebuild the poorly
maintained levee system that failed the city when Katrina struck.


      He promised that work on a fortified levee system would be
finished by next year, "so that this city is protected against a
100-year storm. Because we should not be playing Russian roulette
every hurricane season."


      Implicit in Obama's remarks was an indictment of sorts against
former President George W. Bush's administration for its handling
of the crisis. Obama called Katrina and its aftermath not just a
natural disaster but "a manmade catastrophe - a shameful breakdown
in government that left countless men, women and children abandoned
and alone."


      But Obama has faced questions of his own about how his
administration handled the Gulf spill, including accusations
officials moved too slowly and deferred too much to BP. The White
House has scrambled repeatedly to right the response, pleasing Gulf
Coast residents with a $20 billion victims' compensation fund Obama
pushed BP to establish. But there is still plenty of skepticism
among Gulf Coast residents about government promises, and Obama
sought to alleviate that.


      "In Washington, we are restoring competence and
accountability," he said. "We're putting in place reforms so that
never again in America is someone left behind in a disaster."


      Arriving without any new policy announcements or benefits for
the city, Obama appeared to hope in part that his mere presence
would reassure residents they were not forgotten. For some, it
might have been enough.


      Obama toured Columbia Parc, a development of attractive new
townhouses that's replacing the St. Bernard Housing Development
that flooded during Katrina. He met a longtime resident who had to
be rescued from her home in a boat after Katrina struck. Several
dozen demonstrators, protesting a shortage of affordable public
housing, chanted nearby: "Housing is a human right."


      And Obama dropped in at the Parkway Bakery and Tavern, a local
institution known for shrimp and roast beef po'boys, which was
underwater after Katrina. "I appreciate you coming here," one
woman told him. He responded with a hug.


      After his speech, Obama defended his administration's handling
of the oil spill in an interview with "NBC Nightly News." The
president said that "because of the sturdiness and swiftness of
the response, there's a lot less oil hitting these shores and these
beaches than anybody would have anticipated given the volume that
was coming out of the BP oil well."
      

Gallery

Five years after Hurricane Katrina's wrath,
President Barack Obama sought to reassure disaster-weary Gulf Coast
residents Sunday that he would not abandon their cause.

On anniversary of Katrina, Obama commits to revival

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