New Orleans recovers its dead, looks to rebuilding

By Paul Simao

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) – The dead of New Orleans, uncounted
and uncollected while the ruined city fought to save Hurricane
Katrina’s survivors, were the top concern on Saturday amid hope
that their numbers may be fewer than once feared.

As police and soldiers prepared to resume removing the
bodies — many in homes marked with paint to identify their
presence when floodwaters were high — the political storm in
Katrina’s wake swept from the U.S. Gulf Coast to Washington.

After unrelenting criticism that U.S. President George W.
Bush and his team had failed to respond quickly and adequately
to the disaster, Federal Emergency Management Agency head
Michael Brown was recalled to Washington on Friday. His role
overseeing Katrina recovery efforts was handed to Vice Admiral
Thad Allen, chief of staff of the U.S. Coast Guard.

The White House continued its string of up-close looks at
the disaster area. Vice President Dick Cheney was scheduled to
visit survivors in Texas on Saturday, and Bush was to travel to
the region for a third time on Sunday.

New Orleans officials said rescuing the stranded and the
helpless, an effort that began after the August 29 storm
breached the city’s levees, had ended and efforts were now
turned entirely to finding bodies. Until that is completed,
they said, there was no hurry to oust those who have refused to
quit the city despite an evacuation order.

More than 300 deaths have been confirmed in Alabama,
Mississippi and Louisiana, though much higher totals have been
feared. About a million people were displaced by the
destruction.

“There’s some encouragement in the initial sweeps. … The
numbers (of dead) so far are relatively minor as compared with
the dire predictions of 10,000,” said Col. Terry Ebbert,
director of Homeland Security for New Orleans.

“The search for living individuals across the city has been
conducted,” he said on Friday. “What we are starting today …
is a recovery operation, a recovery operation to search by
street, by grid, for the remains of any individuals who have
passed away.”

HOLDOUTS

It appeared that some people who had refused to leave the
city — once thought to number in the thousands — were now
more willing to depart. Provisions to take pets along may have
changed some minds. Rescue workers said they had retrieved
hundreds of cats and dogs and reunited some with their owners.

But there were holdouts.

On Bourbon Street, the general manager of Big Daddy’s strip
club was trying to reopen, as soon as water, electricity and
dancers are available.

Manager Saint James said finding dancers “shouldn’t be too
hard. Everyone’s going to come back in town and want to work.”

Jean Brad Lacy left the city but came back. Sweeping leaves
and dried sewage from the pavement outside a one-room home that
had been knee-deep in water, he said he changed his mind when
National Guard troops tried to put him on an airplane.

“I can’t stand no heights,” he said. “I love this place,
this is my home.”

City business leaders were trying to organize a comeback,
The New York Times reported on Saturday. It said executives
aimed to reopen the French Quarter tourist mecca within 90 days
and hold a scaled-down Mardi Gras carnival in late February.

Organizers of the annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage
Festival pledged to stage the 10-day event next spring either
in its traditional fairgrounds location or “as close to New
Orleans as possible,” the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported.

City attorney Sherry Landry said on Friday while there was
power in the central business district, it was not able to
support all buildings.

“It is our goal to restore power to the CBD (central
business district) and clear all streets of debris and glass
within the next seven days. After that we will establish a
process for businesses to return to the city,” Landry said.

By Saturday, Norfolk Southern Railroad expected to complete
repairs on its rail bridge across Lake Pontchartrain to
reconnect New Orleans from the east for the first time since
August 29, the U.S. Transportation Department said.

But most of the ghostly city, which once boasted 450,000
residents, remains in tatters.

“Over in the western areas you don’t see the standing
water, you see the mud. It’s every bit as nasty as the water,
and it’s going to take a long time to clean up but at least the
water is gone,” said chief warrant officer Robert Osborn, a
pilot with the U.S. 1st Cavalry.

“Today we’re seeing cars that are able to drive around. The
causeway is open. Folks are out trying to put plastic on their
roofs,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service resumed limited mail service in the
three states affected by the storm.

COST SOARS

In the nearby town of Slidell survivors were numbed by the
devastation.

Robert Quick, 41, rode out the storm with his wife and two
small children but wound up retreating to the attic of their
home as a tree crashed into the roof and his children watched
their toys float away. He had no flood insurance.

“I rolled the dice. Everybody goes to the casino, I decided
to roll it on flood insurance, you know, 1,200 bucks a year,
this neighborhood never flooded,” he said.

Some federal officials have put the cost of the storm at
between $100 billion and $200 billion.

Risk Management Solutions, a California company that
assesses disasters for more than 400 insurance firms, trading
companies and financial institutions, has raised its estimate
of total hurricane damages to $125 billion and said it expects
insured losses of $40 billion to $60 billion.

Congress has now approved $62.3 billion for hurricane
relief sought by Bush, who warned further requests will come.

The political fall-out over the response in the days after
the storm was likely to continue.

In the U.S. Senate, four top Democrats urged Bush to fire
Brown, amid new questions over his qualifications.

Whoever runs the agency, they said, “must inspire
confidence and be able to coordinate hundreds of federal, state
and local resources. Mr. Brown simply doesn’t have the ability
or the experience to oversee a coordinated federal response of
this magnitude.”

Sen. Trent Lott, a Republican who lost his Mississippi home
in the storm, said Brown “has been acting like a private,
instead of a general.”

ABC News cited source as saying Brown was expected to be
out of his post as head of the disaster agency soon.

The House Government Reform Committee is to hold a hearing
on the widely criticized response to the disaster would begin
on Thursday. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental
Affairs Committee will open a similar hearing on Wednesday.