WASHINGTON, September 2, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – US President George W. Bush came under fire Friday, September 2, over his too-slow response to the devastation caused by the killer Katrina Hurricane and his administration's disaster preparedness policies, in addition to the manner in which Bush made his public entry into the growing crisis on the Gulf coast.

"Nothing about the President's demeanor yesterday (Wednesday) - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis," said The New York Times.

Bush cut short his nearly five-week vacation in Texas Wednesday to coordinate efforts to respond to the hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast Monday.

Hundreds of thousands of people along the Gulf Coast were forced out from their homes by the storm.

The hurricane is also believed to have killed at least hundreds of people in Louisiana and Mississippi and plunged New Orleans, the hardest-hit city, into chaos with looters roaming down the streets of the stricken city.

Thousands are also feared to have perished in the hurricane and floods, or while waiting for help.

"People are dying here," said New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who has angrily denounced the level of outside help the city has received.

The head of the New Orleans emergency operations also described the relief efforts to help the stricken people in the city as a national disgrace.

On Friday, at least one explosion was heard in the southwest of the hurricane-stricken city, apparently involving several railroad cars, according to CNN.

"We're trying to get a hazmat team out there right now," a New Orleans police official told the cable network.

" Dear Mr. Bush. Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news," Moore said.

The US President's slow reaction to help the stricken people in the hurricane-hit areas also drew sarcastic rebukes from the Oscar winner director Michael Moore.

"Dear Mr. Bush. Any idea where all our helicopters are? It's Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted," Moore said in an open letter to Bush, a copy of which was obtained by IslamOnline.net.

"Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them?"

The Oscar winner also mocked at Bush' late cutting of his vacation to "hurry" to check the hurricane-hit areas as if he had no idea about what was going on.

"That night the weatherman said this storm was on its way to New Orleans. That was Thursday! Did anybody tell you? I know you didn't want to interrupt your vacation and I know how you don't like to get bad news.

"Plus, you had fundraisers to go to and mothers of dead soldiers to ignore and smear. You sure showed her!"

US Democrats also joined the fray and launched diatribe on Bush.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg cast Bush's first survey of the damage, viewed from his window on Air Force One as the presidential jet headed back to Washington two days after the hurricane hit, as an imperial act removed from the suffering of the people below.

"It was not enough for the president to bank his plane and look at the window and say, 'Oh, what a devastating site,'" he said.

"Instead of looking out the window of an airplane, he should have been on the ground giving the people devastated by this hurricane hope.'"

Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., also said he was struck by Bush's "cavalier attitude toward the plight of poor people across Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama".

The American newspapers and experts also slammed Bush's cutting of federal funding for improvements in the states.

"Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge," charged the usually restrained The New York Times.

"Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?"

Experts pointed out that a plan to shore up the levees around New Orleans was abandoned last year for lack of government funding, the Independent said.

They maintained that flood-control spending for south-eastern Lousiana had been chopped every year that President Bush has been in office, that hurricane protection funds have also fallen and that the local army corps of engineers has also had its budget cut.