By Russell McCulley NEW ORLEANS, July 31 (Reuters) - Louisiana homeowners filed applications in record numbers on Tuesday ahead of a midnight deadline to request government compensation for damages from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Nearly two years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, authorities have been heavily criticized for being slow to settle claims and hand out payments while much of the city still sits damaged and deserted. The state's Road Home program, designed to compensate homeowners for damages not covered by insurance policies, announced last week it would take no more applications for financial aid after July 31. By early afternoon, IFC International, the private company that administers the homeowners assistance program, had logged 1,850 new applications on the Road Home Web site, easily surpassing previous daily records, said spokeswoman Gentry Brann. "We've had a tremendous surge," she said. The program was launched in August 2006, a year after Katrina flooded most of New Orleans and 11 months after Rita hit western Louisiana. Only about half of the city's pre-storm population of 480,000 has returned. The rush of 11th-hour applications was expected to push the total number of homeowners seeking grants to more than 175,000, Brann said. Louisiana officials say the $6.4 billion in federal money appropriated for the program will not be enough and that as much as $11 billion could be needed by the time it is over. As of Monday, Brann said the program had processed claims on 38,835 properties, with an average settlement of about $70,000. The program hopes to have closed on 90,000 claims by the end of 2007, she said.
