A grim search for bodies

NEW ORLEANS -- After a week of rescuing the living from the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, officials yesterday began the grim task of collecting and identifying the dead.

At the same time, police launched a concerted effort to take back control of New Orleans neighborhoods from gun-toting men who residents say had exploited the lawlessness that followed the storm. Officers killed at least five people and wounded several others who shot at contractors for the US Army Corps of Engineers who were crossing a bridge to help repair a canal.

With most of the city's 500,000 residents evacuated, and the region swarming with some 12,000 National Guard troops, medical authorities began the biggest post-mortem collection and identification process since the Sept. 11 attacks, and suggested the final death toll could rival the 3,000 killed in that disaster.

State officials said they had collected the bodies of 59 people whose death are considered storm-related, some of them people with pre-existing medical conditions who died in hospitals or makeshift triage units. Officials said there were an estimated 100 bodies in St. Bernard Parish east of New Orleans. They refused to estimate with any precision how high the overall death toll will be, but none disputed Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco's and Mayor Ray C. Nagin's estimates that it would be in the thousands, and US Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt yesterday projected a similar toll.

Until yesterday, recovering the dead had been delayed while authorities concentrated on saving the tens of thousands trapped by flood waters or sheltered in the unruly squalor of the Superdome and convention center. Ten bodies were removed from the domed stadium during the day, officials said.

A grim-faced Dr. Louis Cataldie, who with Dr. Fred Cerise had tried to save some of the dying at the Superdome, said the mission had broadened. ''We were working for the living," Cataldie said. ''Now, we're working for the dead and the living."

Todd Ellis, who heads the federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team, said three teams of 30 each from around country were prepared to handle up to 1,000 bodies ''over the next day or two," and more if the numbers rise.

Cataldie, the medical director of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, said medical officials can identify about 140 bodies a day, but without knowing the death toll, could not estimate how long that process will take.

''We're preparing for the worst and hoping for the best," said Cataldie. ''As the water recedes, I'm not sure what we're gonna find."

Cataldie said because so many bodies were exposed to water for extended periods, skin had slipped off body parts, including fingertips, making identification more difficult. He said officials will rely on DNA and dental identification.

''I don't think visual identification will be possible" in many cases, he said. ''They've just been in the water too long."

Cataldie said none of the bodies he had seen were of children. But other officials said some infants had died of dehydration and other illnesses after the storm.

Cataldie also said his paramedics have had to deal with men who have menaced them with guns and false reports. ''We got a report of three bodies in the water on Canal Street. We got over there and we had two mattresses and a pillow," said Cataldie.

Sergeant Cathy Flinchum, a spokeswoman for the Louisiana State Police, said criminals were making bogus emergency calls to police to divert officers from areas where they were intent on committing crimes.

New Orleans police said officers had frequent skirmishes with gangs. Harrah's Casino has become the de facto police headquarters as officers try to reassert their authority. ''We are getting one skirmish after another; they are all over," said Police Captain Michael Pfeiffer.

Mike Rogers, a US Army Corps of Engineers coordinator, said the shooting involving the contractors overshadowed a day when considerable progress was made in fixing the breach at the 17th Street Canal that led to much of the flooding. He said that the leak was plugged, and said that while the corps was sticking with its estimate of up to 80 days to pump out the city, it could be as little as 35 days ''if we get maximum capacity." He said many areas are already dry.

The sky above the city was thick with military helicopters, as search and rescue efforts inside city limits began to abate and thousands of National Guard troops fanned out across the city's 199 square miles to conduct security operations. Brigadier General Michael P. Fleming, who is in charge of National Guard operations here, said about 3,000 people in some harder-to-reach areas had been evacuated by air in the past 24 hours, 95 of whom were in critical medical condition. He said there were 12,000 soldiers and airmen taking part in Task Force Pelican, as the relief effort has been dubbed, across Louisiana, and that force would swell to 16,000 by today.

The Department of Social Services said they had accounted for 49,000 displaced people in 75 Louisiana shelters, and another 47,540 people in 10 shelters in Texas, Arkansas, and Alabama. There are about 1,000 others in six special needs shelters in Louisiana, officials said.

NAACP President Bruce S. Gordon said the civil rights organization wants to move those evacuees being held in large centers like the Astrodome in Houston to smaller, church-based shelters in a 250-mile radius of New Orleans. He said the NAACP has gotten many black churches, most of them Baptist, to pledge to offer shelter to those displaced by Katrina.

Gordon said the news media has overblown the amount of crime that has taken place since the storm, and demonized many of its victims, who are disproportionately African-American. He said the NAACP was disturbed by what it considers a double standard in which blacks foraging for food and water are described as looters, and others are described in more benign terms.

Gordon, who earlier toured storm-struck Biloxi in neighboring Mississippi, said there was growing frustration among those who had suffered outside New Orleans. ''Biloxi has not been given the attention it needs," he said.

In places that surround New Orleans, that frustration was palpable.

Tim Fossier, 46, is a volunteer who said he spent much of the last week rescuing people in St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans. ''People are dying on the rooftops in St. Bernard's, but you wouldn't know it because all you people are focusing just on New Orleans," said Fossier.

Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, south of the city, cried on NBC's ''Meet the Press" as he implored federal officials to send more help to his constituents. ''I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sakes, shut up and send us somebody," he said.

Officials prepared for a surge of homeowners into Jefferson Parish today when they will be allowed to return briefly to gather some belongings and check on their houses. Yesterday, a long line of cars formed just outside the parish, or county.

At Ochsner Clinic Foundation, one of only three hospitals in the metro area still operating, officials expect to be busy after people return to Jefferson Parish. ''As people return to their homes, they're going to have puncture wounds, saw cuts, snake bites," said Joan Mollohan, Ochsner's vice president of human resources.

There was an emerging disagreement between federal and local officials about how strictly the evacuation of the city should be enforced. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said too many people were refusing to leave.

But US Representative William Jefferson, who represents New Orleans, said federal officials had to be more flexible.

''You can't just shut a city down," Jefferson said.

Globe correspondent Keith O'Brien contributed to this article.