New Orleans searches for dead and living

A man refuses to be rescued by US Coast Guard swimmer Dustin Skarra (R) at his flooded home in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans Sunday. Rescue crews searching a still-flooded New Orleans neighbourhood Sunday found more bodies and survivors, but they came across residents who flatly refused to leave their homes cut off from the rest of the city by floodwaters. PHOTO: AFP

As emergency teams scouted flooded homes and streets for bodies, authorities said Louisiana's official death toll of 59 could rise into the thousands.

Rescuers in boats and helicopters were still pulling hundreds of people from rooftops, homes and buildings and police said they were getting 1,000 or more emergency calls for help each day, many from people still trapped in their homes and attics by floodwaters.

But the rescuers also came across residents who flatly refused to leave their homes cut off from the rest of the city by floodwaters.

In the city's ninth ward, rescue boat crews passed by dozens of bodies floating in the water. A grotesquely bloated dead man still hung from a tree where he had apparently sought shelter from rising waters after Hurricane Katrina slammed the city a week ago.

"We've seen more people dead than alive," said Michael Lester, who spent much of Sunday in his boat plying the waterlogged streets.

And he pointed to the hundreds of submerged cars whose owners he said likely chose to ride out the storm but did not survive it.

Several boats returned empty from their search in the worst-affected areas.

One man brought to dry land insisted he wanted to return to his home, despite pleas by paramedics who tried to convince him he would soon run out of food and drinking water and get sick from the sewage-filled floodwaters.

"We all die one day," said Carl Roberts, 74, shrugging.

"Everything flooded out of the house but I still have a bed on the second floor. I'm staying," he said.

Rescuers urged him to think of his relatives who fled before Katrina struck.

"I'm thinking of my family but I'm not leaving," said Roberts.

A paramedic shattered by the death and misery she had seen in the past few days broke down in tears.

Local officials believe thousands remain in the once-vibrant city despite mass evacuations before and after Katrina struck the US Gulf Coast last Monday, hammering an area the size of Britain in one of the biggest natural disasters in American history. Well over 153 deaths have been confirmed in Mississippi, with many people unaccounted for.

Authorities were slowly regaining control of New Orleans after days of murder, rape and looting that horrified America and the world.

The US Army Corps of Engineers said it was making progress toward pumping out the city but still expected it would take 80 days or more to complete the job.

President George W. Bush visited relief efforts in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Poplarville, Mississippi, on Monday -- his second trip to the devastated region in less than a week.

His administration, criticised heavily for its slow response to the flooding, sent top officials to the disaster zone on Sunday and pledged to do whatever it took to clean up New Orleans and help its evacuees.

Some battered survivors could not contain their anger.

"We have been abandoned by our own country," Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish just south of New Orleans, told NBC's "Meet the Press."