Searches, cleanup go on in New Orleans

Officials search a flooded home in New Orleans in the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina Saturday. PHOTO: AFP

Officials working to identify remains processed bodies around the clock at a field morgue set up in St. Gabriel, a small community between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. A chain link fence covered in black plastic hid the operation from onlookers.

"The ability to capture useful information from that body diminishes from week to week, month to month," Terry Edwards, the morgue's director, said Saturday.

The confirmed death toll in Louisiana stood at 154 people, including some patients on life support who died when power went out, but the toll was expected to climb as crews collected bodies trapped in houses and floating in murky water.

Police and military officials have been marking the location of bodies with global positioning devices and paint on the outside of houses.

At the convention centre, the chaotic site where thousands initially took refuge before being evacuated a week ago, bulldozers pushed heaps of chairs, sleeping bags and other discarded items into giant piles. Dump trucks were hauling the debris away.

Tow truck drivers started picking up scores of abandoned cars littering the streets while other workers unloaded food and supplies for employees working in Bell South's downtown office.

At the Parc St. Charles hotel, workers went floor to floor cleaning up: "There's a lot of spoiled meat, a lot of bacteria that needs to be cleaned up," said Bob Allen, who was supervising the job.

At the Superdome, where thousands first sought shelter only to be trapped inside by the floodwaters, water levels had dropped markedly. Water that once submerged cars parked around the dome had dropped to about a foot high.

A group of police, doctors and National Guardsmen inspected Charity Hospital, where doctors and patients had been stranded in rising flood waters.