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New Orleans return delayed

With Tropical Storm Rita bearing down on the Gulf of Mexico and growing political pressure from federal leaders, Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Monday that New Orleans residents could not return home after all and that any people already in the city should evacuate.

We are suspending all reentry into the city of New Orleans as of this moment,", Nagin said. The mayor said he backed away from his earlier decision because of fresh fears about Rita, which forecasters said could become a hurricane by Tuesday. Current weather projections indicate that Rita, which was threatening Key West, Fla., Monday night, could roar across the Gulf and strike the lower portions of Louisiana by the weekend.

The city`s levees, overwhelmed by Hurricane Katrina, ",are still in very weak condition", and many of the pumps used to push the mucky floodwaters back into Lake Pontchartrain are not yet operating,", Nagin said. If Rita were to dump nine inches of rain on New Orleans, the result would be ",three to four feet of flooding in most parts of the city,", he said. Asked if anything could be done to buttress the levee system before Rita were to strike, Nagin replied: ",Just tell people to run.",