BREAKING NEWS

Obama pledges Gulf support on Katrina anniversary

NEW ORLEANS – Five years after Hurricane Katrina's wrath, US 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.
Obama 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 showed 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.