BEIJING, June 7
(Xinuanet) -- Hurricane Katrina displaced more than 400,000 people from the New Orleans
area and the Mississippi Gulf Coast last year, according to a U.S. Census Bureau
report Wednesday.
The figures show that
the New Orleans metropolitan area remained vastly shrunken in population four months
after the storm, having lost 378,000 people.
The Gulfport-Biloxi region, which lost 41,000 people
from before Katrina to January, was the second among metropolitan areas for
population loss, the figures show.
Census officials warned that some of the figures are
subject to larger than normal margins of error and, moreover, that the figures
are already at least five months old.
David Bowman, a researcher for the Louisiana Recovery
Authority, estimated that the population of New Orleans has grown from
156,000 in January to 192,000 in May. About 450,000 people lived there before
Katrina. Enditem
(Agencies)
