Bush admn takes more heat over Katrina

The storm-battered state urgently wants its citizens out of refugee shelters across 10 US states and into longer-term accommodations, because some may not be able to return home for months, if ever.

But the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) -- already facing furious criticism over its handling of the disaster -- is not moving fast enough, charged Colonel Jeff Smith, deputy head of Louisiana's Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

"We have real concerns right now with the assistance we are getting from Fema on temporary housing," fumed Smith.

"We have raised this issue now for days. We do not feel this process is working fast enough," he told reporters in Louisiana's capital Baton Rouge, in an unusually direct official attack on the embattled agency.

"We feel like there needs to be trailers rolling and things happening that are not happening as quickly as they should at this point," Smith said, adding that state officials had complained of the problem to US Vice President Dick Cheney when he visited Baton Rouge last week. "We want our citizens back here."

But Fema spokesman David Passey dismissed the claim, saying the agency was doing everything it could to offer temporary accommodation to refugees and that the first 10 families were moving into Fema-supplied trailers.

"We believe that the effort is progressing very well," he said. "We have more than 1,000 manufactured homes and trailers moving in this direction," he said in Baton Rouge.

The criticism came as the administration of US President George W. Bush came under intense fire from politicians and victims over a lack of official preparedness and the grindingly slow pace of the relief effort.

Fema chief Michael Brown was removed two days ago as the government point man on the Katrina crisis as he became the focus of a public and political firestorm that has put a severe strain on the administration.