The toll from Saturday's Hurricane Rita rose to 10, while the number of dead from Hurricane Katrina has now passed 1,100.

Rescuers in helicopters and boats continued to patrol for victims throughout the flooded low-lands and devastated communities along the Gulf Coast as Bush met emergency response leaders at Lake Charles, one of several caught in the eye of the storm's 195-kilometer (120-mile) an hour winds.

It is Bush's seventh trip to the region since Hurricane Katrina struck on August 29, killing 1,121 people, leaving hundreds of thousands homeless and exposing serious weaknesses in state and federal disaster management.

"I understand there's a lot of frustration" among people who were scattered by the storm and wanted to "come back to the communities they love," he said.

"But it's very important for them to understand that now is not the time to come back, until they get the utilities up and running and until they can get the sewer systems running and until they get some water people can drink."

Rita failed to deliver a catastrophe on the scale of the first storm but it has fed the criticism against the US authorities' response to natural disasters.

Hundreds of thousands of evacuees were stranded on clogged highways when the hurricane hit, while others have found themselves marooned in the disaster zone without assistance.

"Our government sucks. They're horrible... Bush, he dropped food to foreign countries and he can't get to his own people," said Christina Guerra, 35, of storm-hit Orange, Texas.

Meanwhile Michael Brown, who quit as head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) less than two weeks after the Katrina disaster, defended himself Tuesday before a House of Representatives committee tasked with assessing what went wrong.

Brown said he had been a victim of a media slur campaign and blamed local officials, particularly Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, both opposition Democrats, for failing to heed pleas to order mass evacuations.

"I very strongly, personally regret that I was unable to persuade Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin to sit down, get over their differences and work together. I just couldn't pull that off," Brown, a Republican, said.

But his responses failed to convince some committee members and have fueled media and Democratic party allegations that FEMA was stacked with Bush "cronies" who were unsuitable for the job.

Democratic congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said: "As hurricane Katrina tragically demonstrated, serious consequences result when unqualified cronies are appointed to federal public safety positions".

Meanwhile residents of the least affected parts of New Orleans, a virtual ghost town since Katrina, continued to return after Nagin partially reopened the city on Monday.

But New Orleans police chief Eddie Compass quit the force without explanation, saying only "it's time to hand over the reins to someone else".

The force is reportedly preparing to conduct a case-by-case investigation into the nearly 250 officers, out of a total of 1,700, who failed to report for duty after Katrina disaster.

Some fled, but a number also committed suicide, according to police colleagues.

On the economic front, crude oil production in the Gulf -- the heart of the US energy industry -- remained closed and more than 78 percent of natural gas output was offline as a result of the twin storms, official figures showed.

The situation was deemed alarming enough for Bush on Monday to urge Americans to cut back on driving, and on Tuesday the White House said it would ask government employees to avoid unnecessary travel. Related Links
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