Bush to Address Nation From New Orleans Tonight
BLITZER: These are live pictures that we're seeing right -- live pictures coming from New Orleans. Unfortunately all-too familiar. Still, big parts of New Orleans under water, as you can see, although, the water is going down and more and more parts of this city beginning to dry up. The mayor earlier today making some optimistic statements suggesting that people will be allowed to start coming back in the coming days, including businesses that will be reopened in the French Quarter of New Orleans. But right now, at least in this part of New Orleans, you can see much of this city is underwater. And as much of this water is still very, very visible, it has gone down -- it has gone down significantly over the past two-and-a-half weeks. They're pumping out water big time in New Orleans. There's still, though, lots and lots and lots of work must be done. There's also new information we're getting here in THE SITUATION ROOM from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the massive task of draining those floodwaters out of New Orleans. Let's get the latest. Our senior Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre is standing by with more. Jamie?</s>JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN SENIOR PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, as we look at those live pictures of what's going on in New Orleans, keep in mind that it's not so much the pumping that's getting the water our, but gravity as the water is draining out into Lake Pontchartrain. And today an optimistic prediction from the Army Corps of Engineers. Barring any more storm, they're saying that in five days, some very significant areas of New Orleans will be essentially dry. And then they're predicting that by October 2 -- early October, less than three weeks -- they will have essentially gotten all of the water out of the city, again, barring a storm. Also today, Wolf, though, an admission from the Army Corp of Engineers that they could have been much better prepared to do those emergency levee repairs in the middle of a flood, and essentially that they could have had and probably should have had more helicopters, more sandbags -- those big, 3,000 pound sandbags - pre-positioned, standing by to go in and do the repairs right away. And again, it wouldn't have prevented the flood but it might have speeded up the recovery, possibly limited some of the damage. And the third thing they said today was that they're going to go back and look at a plan that they rejected back in the '60s and the '70s because of environmental concerns and a lawsuit, that would, instead of building up the levees, put big barriers to the two areas where the Gulf moves into Lake Pontchartrain. The idea is you can perhaps do a better job of protecting New Orleans in the future by preventing Lake Pontchartrain from filling up from the storm surge instead of having to build the levees up to withstand a Category 4 hurricane. But again, the Army Corps doesn't decide this. They're just going to present options, but they're going to go back and look at the plan. Wolf.</s>BLITZER: All right, Jamie. Thanks very much. Jamie McIntyre at the Pentagon. Coming up, up close and personal in New Orleans. Anderson Cooper is standing by. He will take us on a tour of the area. He'll tell us what he's experiencing in Katrina's aftermath. Plus the youngest hurricane victims, revisited. We're on the scene for the mission to bring missing children and their parents back together. We'll be right back.