CNN.com - Attention now turning to the dead - Sep 5, 2005

CNN.com - Attention now turning to the dead - Sep 5, 2005Attention now turning to the dead
Corpse recovery teams go house to house in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Body recovery teams Monday will press on with the grim task of going house to house to find more victims of the flooding wrought by Hurricane Katrina in this city where the mayor said thousands had died.

Todd Ellis, incident commander of the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response effort in the state, said Sunday that three teams of 31 people each are now in the disaster area.

The bodies recovered will be taken to refrigerated trucks at collection sites and then transported to a portable morgue in St. Gabriel, south of Baton Rouge, where officials will try to identify the remains using DNA technology, dental X-rays, fingerprints and photographs.

Officials so far have collected 59 bodies from New Orleans, including 10 from the Louisiana Superdome, where thousands of people sought refuge when levees around the sunken city broke and water flooded the Big Easy on August 29. (See video looking back at a tragic week -- 3:32)

President Bush on Monday will go to Baton Rouge -- now the headquarters of relief efforts in Louisiana -- and will also visit Poplarville, Mississippi, not far from the Gulf coast region that also was devastated by Katrina.

The president toured devastated Biloxi, Mississippi, and New Orleans last week.

In Mississippi, the death toll stands at 161, according to the state's emergency management agency, but that toll also is expected to rise.

With their churches in pieces, the state's faithful found other ways to worship on Sunday. (See video of makeshift worship -- 3:16)

Two altar rails and some folding chairs sitting on an empty floor are all that remain of St. Mark's Episcopal Church outside Gulfport, but about 30 people showed up for services anyway.
Texas seeks help with evacuees

Former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton will visit Monday with some of the thousands of evacuees who were moved from the Superdome to Houston's Astrodome in the past week.

The two former heads of state were asked by President Bush last week to lead a national funding effort to help victims of the hurricane, a mission similar to the one they undertook following the tsunami in South Asia last December.

The elder Bush and Clinton are scheduled to speak to reporters at 9 a.m. CT (10 a.m. ET) in Texas.

That state's governor, Rick Perry, has asked other states to open their doors to the storm evacuees, who are stretching the emergency resources of the Longhorn State.

"As Texas provides food, shelter and medicine to more than 230,000 evacuees, we are concerned about our capacity to meet this great human need as thousands more arrive by the day," Perry said in a statement on his Web site Sunday. "Many states have generously offered to help provide relief, and with Texas nearing its shelter capacity we have begun contacting those states to take them up on their kind offer to provide additional support."

On Sunday evening, a plane carrying evacuees landed at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, the first group to go to Arizona.

President Bush on Sunday ordered flags at government buildings and military installations across the country to fly at half-staff, to honor both the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who died Saturday night at the age of 80.
Jefferson Parish to let residents in

Back in New Orleans, residents of Jefferson Parish -- located on the other side of the 17th Street Canal from a levee breach that flooded the downtown -- may begin returning to their homes to collect some belongings starting at 6 a.m. CT (7 a.m. ET) Monday.

A statement on the Jefferson Parish Web site says residents will be allowed into the parish from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day, with a strictly enforced dusk-to-dawn curfew. (See video on signs of recovery in Jefferson Parish -- 3:06)

Residents must show ID proving they live there.

Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard suggested that only "heads of household" return to assess damage and that they should carpool to save gas. Women, he said, "should not come alone."

Some residents of that parish tried to go back to their homes Sunday but were stopped and now line the highway into the area, waiting for the morning.
The dead? 'We hope it's no more than 10,000'

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said Sunday that the dead in the city numbered "in the thousands."

"Thousands. If you do the math, there's 500,000 people in the city," the clearly weary mayor said. "We probably evacuated 80 percent" during the mandatory evacuation last Sunday.

"We probably moved about 50,000 people out as it relates to -- 50,000 to 60,000, these shelters of last resort. So you probably have another 50,000 to 60,000 out there. You do the math, man. What do you think? 5 percent is unreasonable (as a death toll)? 10 percent? 20 percent? It's going to be a big number."

One senior military commander on duty in New Orleans was no more optimistic.

"Maybe 3,000, maybe 5,000. God, we hope it's no more than 10,000," he told CNN.

The Coast Guard is continuing around-the-clock missions to rescue residents still trapped in their homes and elsewhere. (See video on continuing rescues -- 2:09)

But Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff said Sunday a "significant" number of people don't want to leave.

"That is not a reasonable alternative," Chertoff told reporters at a news conference. "We are not going to be able to have people sitting in houses in the city of New Orleans for weeks and months while we de-water and clean this city -- with the hope that we're going to continue to supply them with food and water."

Chertoff said the city will not be livable and sanitary during the cleanup phase in the weeks and months ahead.

On Sunday, a helicopter that had been involved in rescue operations crashed northwest of New Orleans.

No evacuees were on board the Eurocopter AS 332 Super Puma and the pilot and crew were rescued safely, according to an official with Helinet Aviation Services, which had a chopper flying above the crash site.
Report: Police shoot gunmen

In New Orleans, police shot and killed at least five people Sunday after gunmen opened fire on contractors crossing a bridge to make levee repairs, The Associated Press reported.

Deputy Police Chief W.J. Riley told the AP that police shot at eight people who had guns, killing five or six.

The Army Corps of Engineers told AP that 14 contractors escorted by police were fired upon while crossing the Danziger Bridge, which spans a canal connecting Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River.

Corps spokesman John Hall told AP the contractors were on their way to launch barges into Lake Pontchartrain to help fix a breach in the 17th Street Canal.

Initial AP reports had wrongly indicated that the contractors themselves were shot by police.

At the 17th Street Canal, crews worked to close a 500-foot breach of a levee that allowed Lake Pontchartrain to flood parts of New Orleans.

But that breach and another on the London Canal were being left open because water was draining back into the lake. Officials said that once they can get the New Orleans pumping stations running it will take at least 36 days to drain the city.
Mayor: Police, firefighters traumatized

Nagin said Sunday that his top priority was to start moving traumatized police and firefighters out of the city so that they can get medical and psychological treatment.

"They've been holding the city together for three or four days, almost by themselves -- doing everything imaginable, and the toll is just too much for them," Nagin said. (Watch video of the mayor discussing the heavy toll -- 6:20)

Police Superintendent Eddie Compass said that two of his officers committed suicide, including one who had discovered his wife had died.

Compass also said that reports that 60 percent of the police force had deserted was "totally ridiculous."