TENS of thousands of people may never return to New Orleans, threatening a population crash as devastating to the city as Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters, experts told The Times yesterday.

In addition to the approximately 350,000 people who fled the city before the storm, more than 100,000 have been evacuated since and sent as far afield as Michigan and Utah, many vowing never to return.

With parts of New Orleans unlikely to be habitable again for at least a year, and roughly 150,000 homes destroyed, thousands of the evacuees are enrolling their children in new schools, seeking work and taking long leases on homes.

Many say that there is nothing in New Orleans to return to and they are weary of spending each hurricane season living in fear below sea level.

“My wife and I have no intention of going back. This is our home now,” Lionel Daggs, one evacuee, said, after arriving in Denver, Colorado.

Donald Henry, a construction worker who moved to Detroit, said: “I’m going to make Michigan my home. There ain’t nothing for me in New Orleans any more.”

Touring the Houston Astrodome, where thousands of evacuees are being sheltered, Barbara Bush, the former First Lady, raised eyebrows by declaring: “What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas.”

A Gallup poll yesterday indicated that 63 per cent of Americans thought New Orleans was devastated beyond repair. New Orleans’s population peaked at 630,000 in 1960 but had slumped to 445,000 by this year. Demographers say that if even 5 to 10 per cent of the evacuees do not return it could have a catastrophic social and economic impact.

Alan Berube, a demographer at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told The Times that many American cities, including New Orleans, had coped with incremental population declines since the 1960s.

“But it’s a different thing to experience a 10, 20 or even 30 per cent drop in the space of five to ten years, which is the time span we’re looking at in New Orleans. It could be horrific for the city. Such a rapid population decline is unprecedented in America.”

Mr Berube said that unless the planners rebuilding New Orleans admit that there will be a far smaller population — “a tough admission for a city to make” — the social and economic impact will be severe.

“There will be obsolete schools, government buildings, and housing. There is plenty of research to suggest that vacant buildings undermine stability, initiate crime and promote a cycle of decline. Much depends on how it is rebuilt.”

The diaspora has scattered tens of thousands far and wide across America. More than 220,000 have arrived in Texas, 100,000 in Arkansas and even 1,000 in Arizona, two time zones away.

Regional newspapers are filled with stories of people vowing never to return to a city where thousands of dwellings have either been destroyed or will have to be pulled down because they are infested with disease and rot.

City officials are concerned about how to entice the population back. John LaBruzzo, the state senator, said: “We are going to lose a lot of the population. We’re going to have to repopulate the city and surrounding area.” He is working on legislation to attract businesses through tax credits.

CAPITAL SNUB

Ten Washington buses sent to rescue victims returned all but empty yesterday because only one person was willing to move to the US capital. The convoy drove around for several days but the few people they found did not want to go with them.

JACKSON TRIBUTE

Michael Jackson was so moved by Katrina victims that he has written a song to record with top artists and release as a charity single. He has raised more than $60 million for African famine relief with his We Are the World anthem.

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