MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Bush: storm tragedy worse than 9/11

US President George Bush has said that New Orleans suffered more damage than New York did in the September 11 attacks and promised a government recovery effort of unprecedented scale.

The president will tour the hurricane-devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, former President George H Bush, and former President Bill Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims as they did for last year's Asian tsunami, the White House said.

Bush said that while the terrorist attacks of September 11 were a man-made disaster, the aftermath of September 11 and Hurricane Katrina were "just as serious in both cases."

"New Orleans is more devastated than New York was," Bush said. "Just physically devastated as is the coast of Mississippi. So we've got a lot of work to do."

He said viewing entire neighborhoods under water, as he did yesterday from Air Force One on his way back to Washington, was "very emotional... It is so devastating it is hard to describe it."

Bush said his emotions were somewhat different from September 11 because then he realised there were some killers who had killed Americans as opposed to the storm.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Bush will survey the Alabama and Mississippi coast by helicopter, then go on to New Orleans. He also will tour some locations on the ground. He got a higher-altitude view on Wednesday when Air Force One dropped several thousand feet to fly directly over the region during Bush's flight from his Texas ranch back to Washington.

"The president has wanted to visit the area as soon as possible," McClellan said. "We didn't go sooner because we didn't want to be disruptive of efforts on the ground."

Bush had said earlier that thousands more victims of Hurricane Katrina still need to be rescued and acknowledged the frustration of people who need food, water and shelter.

"I fully understand people wanting things to have happened," he said in a live interview in the Roosevelt Room of the White House with ABC television's Good Morning America programme. "I understand the anxiety of people on the ground. ... So there is frustration. But I want people to know there's a lot of help coming."