Thousands assess damage; 10,000 urged to leave city

METAIRIE, La. -- As thousands streamed back into the city's suburbs to assess the damage to their homes, authorities pleaded with the estimated 10,000 remaining in flooded areas of New Orleans to get out of a city that was, in the words of the deputy police chief, destroyed by ''the greatest catastrophe on American soil."

As police in boats conducted a building-to-building search for survivors and bodies, New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said he thought the death toll could rise as high as 10,000. Governor Kathleen Blanco said ''several thousand" could be dead. But with the official body count at 71, authorities said it would be weeks before an accurate death toll could be established.

The contrasting images -- of suburban homeowners camping out in their cars overnight for the chance to see what happened to their homes, and defiant urban dwellers refusing to abandon their squalid perches in the Big Easy -- captured the difficulties facing government and military officials as they try to assuage a public that desperately wants to hold onto a sense of the familiar that was shattered by Hurricane Katrina last week.

President Bush made his third trip to the battered region yesterday, accompanied by his wife, Laura. The couple visited a church in Baton Rouge, the state capital, that is one of about 85 places of worship housing nearly 50,000 evacuees throughout the state, before heading off to neighboring Mississippi, which also suffered heavy damage in the storm. There are at least another 50,000 Louisiana residents in shelters out of state, mostly in Texas, state officials said.

At the disaster command center in Baton Rouge, Bush gave a pep talk to the dozens of military and law enforcement officials who are managing the relief effort, then met with Blanco and the Louisiana congressional delegation, who have been bitterly critical of the federal response to the disaster. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff described the meeting as cordial, and some congressmen softened their criticism.

Blanco said she and Bush went to a church shelter together to demonstrate that whatever differences they had in the past had been put behind them.

''We'd like to stop the voices out there," said Blanco, a Democrat. ''There is no divide."

But tensions clearly remain between various state and federal agencies. When a reporter told Chertoff that Representative Bobby Jindal, Republican of Louisiana, complained that there was still too much red tape facing victims of the disaster, US Army Lieutenant General Russel Honore, who is in charge of the relief effort, cut off Chertoff to say, ''That's b.s."

''New Orleans is secure," an agitated Honore said, describing the efforts of relief workers as heroic. Chertoff stood back and let Honore criticize those who had condemned the relief effort.

Citing aerial reconnaissance, Honore said there were about 10,000 people left in New Orleans -- a stunning exodus of a city of some 500,000 prior to the storm. Chertoff said that while some remain in areas that are relatively dry, there were some in areas still underwater, with major health risks posing a threat. Officials began a pumping operation yesterday to drain the city, a process they say could take between 35 and 80 days.

''There is total destruction in the core center" of New Orleans and neighboring St. Bernard Parish, Chertoff said.

Deputy Police Chief Warren Riley echoed that theme, saying police were still encountering people who refused to leave.

''There is nothing here for them and no reason for them to stay, no food, no jobs, nothing," Riley said.

He added that while some are afraid to leave their homes, others are hanging back to loot.

''This city has been destroyed," he said.

Blanco said there were 20,000 National Guard troops from 30 states in Louisiana, with 4,000 more due today. Repairs to the levee breach at the 17th Street Canal were completed Sunday, and engineers began pumping water out of the canal into Lake Pontchartrain yesterday.

Thousands returned to Metairie, New Orleans's nearest suburb, for the first time since Katrina washed ashore a week ago, clogging highways and overwhelming gas stations as exhausted homeowners lined up all night to see what had happened to their houses.

By 6 a.m., when police were set to open the borders of Jefferson Parish, cars were stretched west for miles, and the traffic continued pouring in all day on the few routes left into the metropolitan area.

New Orleans remains closed to residents and will remain that way for weeks, officials say. But authorities in Jefferson Parish, a community of 450,000 people just west of New Orleans, wanted to offer residents a chance to claim valuables, gather some essentials, and check on their homes before closing down the borders again tomorrow night.

And so, with nary a word or a wave of his hand, a Kenner police officer opened one of two checkpoints in the dark and rain yesterday morning, and, like an old-time land rush, people came screaming in.

''I wonder what we're going to be up against," said Greg Wollick, a resident of Kenner, home to Louis Armstrong International Airport, as he sat in his pickup truck just before the borders opened. ''I wonder how much things there will be to do. I've been up all night. I wonder: How will I get a rest?"

Wollick had driven back to Greater New Orleans from Baton Rouge, about 60 miles, a short trip compared to people who returned home yesterday from Houston, Memphis, and Atlanta, where they have been staying with friends or relatives. But no distance, or inconvenience, seemed to deter people who just wanted to know if they still had a house.

Here in the suburb that is home to the New Orleans Saints football practice facility, the city's minor-league baseball team, a few shiny, sprawling malls, and the airport, residents discovered that misfortune was fickle, the condition of their houses depending on how the wind blew and where their houses stood.

Dana Bertot's home in Kenner was beaten, but not broken. She called her father on her cellphone as the sun was rising to tell him, ''It looks OK." A few blocks away, Enrique Saenz was relieved to see his car was flooded, probably ruined, but not his house.

Others did not get off so easily. Flood waters reached the home of Bob and Norla Arnold for the first time in the 18 years they have lived there. Black mold crawled up the walls. Trees were down everywhere. Dead fish rotted in the street.

Deangelo Hayes, 19, almost vomited as he walked out of his beleaguered apartment in the shadow of Interstate 10, choking on the smell left behind by the murky, brown water that had receded.

Katrina did not discriminate between the houses of the rich and poor. A couple of miles away, on an upscale residential street near Airline Drive, Kim and Bob McCann discovered water still flooded their neighborhood. At the sight of it, Kim McCann began to cry.

''It's all right," her husband said, putting his arm around her at the edge of the water. ''Take a deep breath." Then they waded across the brown waters toward their house. They had a list of things they were hoping to bring back with them to their new, if temporary house, in Lafayette. But to get there, they would need one of the hottest commodities in south Louisiana these days -- gas -- a resource so important that John Nguyen was prepared to protect his by force.

Nguyen, who owns a Texaco station in the heart of Metairie, had a pistol on his hip and a semiautomatic assault rifle behind the counter yesterday morning when he opened up for business. Like many pockets of Jefferson Parish, Nguyen's block had power.

And so, by 8 a.m., dozens of people had gathered outside his doors, and nearly a half mile of cars stretched north on the road outside. Nguyen eyed the crowd -- tired and tense, but orderly. He allowed only a few people inside his store at a time. And when asked, he was not shy about brandishing the rifle.

''You've got to take care of what you have," he said.

The Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, announced yesterday that he has cleared the Senate schedule for the week to help hurricane victims with housing, unemployment benefits, healthcare, and rebuilding and cleanup, among a range of other areas.

In addition, Senate committees are prepared to launch a series of oversight hearings into the federal response to the storm as well as gas prices nationwide.

''We're going to take a hard, hard look at our disaster response," said Frist, Republican of Tennessee, who returned to Washington yesterday after two days volunteering his medical services in Louisiana. ''We are here to work. We've got our sleeves rolled up, and we are ready to address it aggressively."

GOP leaders had come under fire in recent days for not announcing plans to address the hurricane immediately. Democrats pointed out that, until Frist's announcement yesterday, the first major item on the Senate agenda this week was a permanent repeal of the estate tax -- a tax that applies only to the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.