Susan Walsh, Associated Press
	President Bush gets a tour of New Orleans damaged by Hurricane Katrina from on board Marine One, yesterday. Bush toured Gulf Coast communities battered by Hurricane Katrina, hoping to boost the spirits of desperate storm victims and exhausted rescuers.
	Andrew West, Lafayette Daily Advertiser via AP
	First lady Laura Bush, left, feeds New Orleans residents, Jeronica McKinley and her son, Delvin McKinley, 9, Friday Sept. 2, 2005, at the Cajundomein Lafayette, La. The McKinleys were evacuated to Lafayette after Hurricane Katrina moved through New Orleans.
	Susan Walsh, Associated Press
	President Bush meets New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin following a news conference at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, yesterday. The mayor had been highly critical of the response time by authorities to the deadly damages of Hurricane Katrina.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said he was stunned by the chaos and devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina that he witnessed in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama before returning to the White House last night to sign a $10.5 billion emergency relief bill hurriedly passed by Congress.

"I'm not going to forget what I've seen," Bush said after a day of tears, tenderness, handshakes and hugs in Mobile, Ala.; Biloxi, Miss.; and New Orleans. "I understand that the devastation requires more than one day's attention."

As heated accusations mounted that many people were stranded unnecessarily for five days without water and food, people were dying and dead bodies were left unattended in the streets, Bush declared: "I am satisfied with the [federal] response. I am not satisfied with all the results."

But the president and others repeatedly insisted yesterday that nobody could have planned for the hurricane's destructive scope or the New Orleans levee breaches the total failure of the Gulf Coast infrastructure.

And Bush made a point of praising Michael Brown, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, whose agency has been criticized by some for insufficiently speedy emergency relief to New Orleans after levee breaks Tuesday flooded the city. "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job," the president said before urging Americans to give cash contributions to the Red Cross and Salvation Army.

First lady Laura Bush, traveling separately in Lafayette, La., where 6,000 evacuees from New Orleans are sheltered in the Cajundome, praised the outpouring of help from across America. She said it was coming from individuals and governments a long way away. "Pittsburgh, I think, called the mayor [of New Orleans] today, and Youngstown, Ohio, is sending trucks of things,," she said. "And, you know, people want to help in whatever way they can."

She said the New Orleans chaos was "what always happens in this kind of disaster," and that often it is the poorest people living low-lying neighborhoods who are the most vulnerable.

She resisted the idea that the federal response was initially a failure. "I know that the federal government is doing every single thing they possibly can, but the president said today ... that it's not adequate. ... This is not the kind of response the federal government wants. We know that we can do it better, and that we can get it better."

But when the president later revised his stance, saying the federal response had been adequate, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was clearly angry. She said his characterization was "an insult" to the people of New Orleans and that it lowered "the standard of excellence of the American people."

Pelosi said she had heard Bush talking yesterday about the need for compassion for the hurricane's victims. "Compassion is a wonderful thing. But it's no substitute for food, water, medicine, education for children," she said, arguing that the federal government has long known that it might have to deal with such a tragedy in New Orleans.

After a day of walking and flying over parts of the 90,000 square miles of stricken region, Bush said the New Orleans Convention Center, where thousands had been without basic necessities, had finally been "secured" by National Guard troops. But by nightfall, thousands of people there were still desperate for help and had been unable to leave.

Bush sounded another note of hope by saying the vital 17th Street levee, one of several that were breached Tuesday, was being repaired by heroic efforts. Nonetheless, officials yesterday estimated that it could take weeks to drain the water from New Orleans and months to dry the city enough to rebuild to begin.

Responding to Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's personal plea that fuel for search-and-rescue missions and to power water pumping plants was in dangerously low supply, Bush said the Colonial Pipeline, a major oil artery from the Gulf Coast, was being repaired faster than expected. But the Energy Department said 90 percent of the crucial U.S. oil production in the Gulf of Mexico had stopped.

The White House also said the National Petroleum Reserve was releasing 30 million barrels of crude oil to deal with soaring gasoline prices around the nation and the fuel demands along the hurricane-ravaged coast, and that 30 million more barrels were coming in from overseas.

After seeing New Orleans' devastation from the air, Bush also received a private earful from Democratic Mayor Ray Nagin, who has publicly decried the federal response as far too limited and too slow.

But Bush was insisted that Nagin's city will be rebuilt, and he praised Congress for quickly passing the emergency spending bill to provide $10 billion for FEMA and $500 million for the Defense Department in their efforts to deal with the catastrophe.

Bush made clear -- as did the Senate on Thursday night and the House when it acted yesterday afternoon -- that the approved spending was simply a downpayment, and that much more money and effort would be needed. There have been estimates that the cost of Katrina could go at least as high as $75 billion, but no one in the administration would speculate on the eventual cost.

The Congressional Black Caucus yesterday held a news conference to express its outrage that federal aid was slow in coming to the victims because airlifted supplies and National Guard protection weren't planned ahead of time. The caucus suggested that these inadequacies might have arisen because so many of the victims were black, poor and sick.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., complained that "God would be ashamed" of the U.S. response. Later he said, "We go across the sea thousands of miles and airlift all the time," he said. "We couldn't get food and water and diapers to the Superdome? Give me a break. Come on."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is black and grew up in Alabama, one of the hard-hit states, responded, "Yes, the African-American community has been heavily affected. But nobody wants to see any American suffer. ... This [catastrophe] is something we haven't seen in the United States. Everybody is doing everything possible. Everyone wants to see these people taken care of."

Rice said she would travel to her home state this weekend. "I just hope that I can be a little bit of an extension for a president who cares deeply about what is going on in the Gulf region but can't be everywhere," she said.