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| In New Orleans' Garden District, a woman's body lay at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street - a business area with antique shops on the edge of blighted housing. The body had been there since at least Wednesday. As days passed, people covered the corpse with blankets or plastic. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images ) |
Metaire, LA. — (AP) One week after Hurricane Katrina turned the region into a disaster of biblical proportions, miles-long lines of vehicles crawled into Jefferson Parish on Monday as residents were allowed to return for brief inspections of what's left of their homes.
The traffic began moving into the parish west of New Orleans at about 6 a.m., and officials planned to allow traffic in for 12 hours, though they encouraged residents to inspect their property, pick up personal items and leave.
Among those returning was Diane Dempsey, a 59-year-old retired Army lieutenant colonel who stopped at the water's edge less than a mile from the house where she grew up and where her aunt lives.
"I'm going to pay someone to get me back there, anything I have to do," she said, sobbing while standing amid boats beached on Veterans Highway. "A lot of these people built these houses anticipating some flood water but nobody imagined this."
Most of the single-story bungalow homes in the neighborhood had water nearly to the rooflines.
The suburban parish, which has 460,000 residents, has been closed since a mandatory evacuation just before Katrina hit. Wide portions of Metairie and Kenner suffered heavy flooding, and authorities said thousands of homes were damaged.
A week after the storm, a definitive death toll remained elusive. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin warned on NBC's "Today" that "it wouldn't be unreasonable to have 10,000" dead.
Despite the grim estimate, he was more upbeat than in previous days, when he railed against the federal government and broke down sobbing during a radio interview.
"We're making great progress now, the momentum has picked up. I'm starting to see some critical tasks being completed," he told NBC.
"The 17th Street canal is about or was about 84 percent closed in yesterday afternoon. We have more troops arriving, so we're starting to make the kind of progress that I kind of expected earlier."
Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore told ABC's "Good Morning America" that fewer than 10,000 people remained in the city, based on aerial reconnaissance.
"This is not a city under siege," he added on NBC. "This city needs help from the big people in America and its technology to get back on its feet. We are focused on the future. We have to finish the search-and-rescue and provide food and water from an area from Mobile (Ala.) to the east side of New Orleans, up to I-20 in Mississippi. This is a pig-big piece of terrain. There are people there that need help. We will do the best we can to get it to them."
On Sunday, as authorities struggled to keep order across New Orleans, gunmen opened fire on a group of contractors on a bridge, rescues of stranded residents continued and the flood waters began to recede, leaving the grisly task of collecting bodies.
The state's largest newspaper lashed out at the federal government's response.
Federal officials urged those still left in New Orleans to leave for their own safety. Large-scale evacuations were completed at the Superdome and Convention Center.
The death toll across the Gulf Coast was not known. But bodies were everywhere: floating in canals, slumped in wheelchairs, abandoned on highways and medians and hidden in attics.
"I think it's evident it's in the thousands," Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said Sunday on CNN, echoing predictions by city and state officials last week.
The Times-Picayune, in an open letter to President Bush, called for the firing of every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying they failed to rescue thousands of citizens stranded by Katrina.
"We're angry, Mr. President, and we'll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry," the editorial said. "Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That's to the government's shame."
"Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially," the letter said. "No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced."
In neighboring Jefferson Parish, residents were allowed back in briefly Monday - as long as they showed a valid ID proving residency, had food, had a full tank of gas and didn't drink the water.
Parish President Aaron Broussard warned residents that they would find all traffic signals destroyed, no open stores and a dusk-to-dawn curfew. He recommended that women not come alone.
Among those returning was Jack Rabito, 61, a restaurant-bar owner, who bought his home in 1965, and like Dempsey didn't have flood insurance. "I won't be getting inside today unless I get some scuba gear," he said, waiting with Dempsey for a ride in a boat to get to his home.
Violence boiled over when 14 contractors on their way to help plug the breech in the 17th Street Canal came under fire as they traveled across a bridge under police escort, said John Hall, a spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers. Police shot at eight people carrying guns, killing five or six, Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley said. None of the contractors was injured, authorities said.
Besides the lawlessness, civilian deaths and uncertainty about their families, New Orleans' police have had to deal with suicides in their ranks. Two officers took their lives, including the department spokesman, Paul Accardo, who died Saturday, according to Riley. Both shot themselves in the head, he said.
A steady stream of reinforcements for police poured down the interstates toward New Orleans late Sunday and early Monday - long convoys of police cars, blue lights flashing, emblazoned with emblems from scattered police, sheriff, and other jurisdictions, in and out of state.
Nagin said Monday he was arranging to rotate out beleaguered emergency workers, who have been working virtually around the clock since before the storm hit.
He said police officers, firefighters and their families would get five or more days in cities with large numbers of hotel rooms - Atlanta and Las Vegas in particular. In addition to rest and relaxation, he said, they will have time to assess their personal situation since many lost homes and relatives. Counselors will be available, he said.
At two of the city's damaged levees, engineers continued making repairs that would allow pumps to begin draining the floodwaters. "The water is receding now. We just have a long ways to go," Mike Rogers, a disaster relief coordinator with the Army Corps of Engineers, said Sunday.
Hundreds of thousands of people already have been evacuated, seeking safety in Texas, Tennessee and other states. With more than 230,000 already in Texas, Gov. Rick Perry ordered emergency officials to begin preparations to airlift some of them to other states that have offered help.
What will happen to the refugees in the long term was not known.
Amid the tragedy, about two dozen people gathered in the French Quarter for the Decadence Parade, an annual Labor Day gay celebration. Matt Menold, 23, a street musician wearing a sombrero and a guitar slung over his back, said: "It's New Orleans, man. We're going to celebrate."
In New Orleans' Garden District, a woman's body lay at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street - a business area with antique shops on the edge of blighted housing. The body had been there since at least Wednesday. As days passed, people covered the corpse with blankets or plastic.
By Sunday, a short wall of bricks had been built around the body, holding down a plastic tarpaulin. On it, someone had spray-painted a cross and the words, "Here lies Vera. God help us."
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