Disaster Chief Taken Off Katrina Job

The embattled director of the Federal Emergency Management agency (Fema) has lost his frontline job overseeing the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, according to reports tonight.

Michael Brown was being sent back to Washington from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where the aid effort is being coordinated, the Associated Press reported. It cited two federal officials, who declined to be named ahead of an expected official announcement.

Reuters said Vice Admiral Thad Allen, chief of staff of the US Coast Guard, would take over relief efforts on the ground, but quoted a homeland security official as saying Mr Brown would continue "to be the administrator for Fema nationally".

Working in Baton Rouge, Mr Brown has been the primary official in charge of the heavily criticised federal response to the hurricane.

During a visit to the disaster area earlier this week, the US president, George Bush, was overheard telling him "Brownie, you're doing one heck of a job", but the Fema director has become a focus for criticism of the relief efforts.

Earlier today there were accusations that Mr Brown had overstated his experience when applying for the director's job.

Mr Brown was also damaged by revelations in recent days that he waited five hours after the storm had struck the Gulf Coast on August 29 before asking his boss - homeland security secretary Mike Chertoff - for approval to dispatch 1,000 support rescuers to the region.

Before the storm hit, Fema had positioned small rescue and communications teams, and the agency has been castigated for not having better preparations when forecasts had given three days of warning of Katrina.

The Fema director told Mr Chertoff that conveying a "positive image" about the government's response would be among the duties of these 1,000 employees, which did not happen in the event.

News of Mr Brown's removal came as the political row over the storm continued to grow and police officers in New Orleans prepared to make the first forcible removals of residents refusing to leave.

In Louisiana, governor Kathleen Blanco wrote to Mr Bush to protest that requests to the federal government for radio equipment and generators had still not been met after a week of waiting.

Even the former secretary of state Colin Powell criticised the US government's response.

"There was more than enough warning over time about the dangers to New Orleans," Mr Powell told ABC news. "Not enough was done. I don't think advantage was taken of the time that was available to us, and I just don't know why." He denied racism was to blame for foot-dragging.

Congress today approved a $52bn (£28bn) budget for additional emergency aid on top of $10.5bn already provided, and officials admitted the total bill was likely to exceed $100bn, but senior Democrats questioned whether the sum should be directed via Fema.

"After what we all have witnessed the past week or so, is there anyone in America who feels we should continue to rely exclusively on Fema to head the federal government's response to this tragedy?" the Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, asked.

The Washington Post reported that five of the top eight officials in Fema had no previous experience in disaster management - but they had extensive backgrounds within Republican politics when they were appointed to their posts by the Bush administration.

Time magazine claimed the official biography of Mr Brown - which stated that he had worked as an "assistant city manager with emergency services oversight" in the Edmond, Oklahoma - exaggerated his record.

Officials said he had been an assistant to the city manager, not assistant city manager. "The assistant is more like an intern," Time was told.

Democrat leaders in congress also threatened to boycott the selection process for a committee that Republican leaders plan to establish to investigate the government's response to the disaster.

In New Orleans, there was still no clear picture of how many had died but authorities said a sweep of the city had found far fewer bodies than expected. This suggested that the death toll may not be in the region of the most catastrophic predictions of 10,000.

The official death toll across the Gulf states is still only just over 300 but more corpses are expected to be discovered as the floodwaters recede. Emergency teams have 25,000 body bags at hand.

A final sweep of New Orleans for voluntary refugees was under way last night, but some locals were already being taken away by force. National Guard officers led at least three people away in plastic handcuffs.

Others were already giving up their attempts to hold out as water supplies ran out and floodwaters, clogged with sewage and toxic waste, failed to recede.

"Some are finally saying 'I've had enough'," Michael Keegan, a US immigration and customs enforcement spokesman said. "They are getting dehydrated. They are running out of food. There are human remains in different houses. The smells mess with your psyche."

Gregg Silverman, a volunteer rescuer, said he had expected to find many more survivors in the city's flooded streets. Instead, he found mostly bodies.

"They had me climb up on a roof, and I did bring an axe up to where a guy had tried to stick a pipe up through a vent," Mr Silverman said.

"Unfortunately, he had probably just recently perished. His dog was still there, barking. The dog wouldn't come. We had to leave the dog just up there in the attic."

Talking about the other bodies he and fellow rescue workers had found, he said: "Obviously, we are not recovering them. We are just tying them up to banisters, leaving them on the roof."

Army engineers pumping water from the city said they feared floating bodies could become caught in the pumps, which are currently removing 311 cubic metres of water a second.

"It's got a huge focus of our attention right now," said John Rickey, of the army corps of engineers. "Those remains are people's loved ones."

The White House announced that Mr Bush would visit the affected areas for a third time at the weekend. The vice president, Dick Cheney, last night became the first top-level government official to tour New Orleans, but his rush through the Gulf coast states earned as much criticism as praise.

One New Orleans resident swore loudly at him as he toured the city. In the Mississippi city of Gulfport, a passer-by described the tour as a "waste of time and taxpayer money".

In Brussels, a Nato meeting agreed to send at least two ships, with a capacity of 6,000 cubic metres, to help reconstruction.