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New Orleans left to the dead and dying

AP, New Orleans
As the last weary refugees evacuated from New Orleans, the shattered city drew closer to dealing with its dead, confronting a gruesome landscape of scattered corpses that were expected to number in the thousands.
No one knows how many people were killed by Hurricane Katrina and how many more succumbed waiting to be rescued. But the bodies are everywhere: hidden in attics, floating in the ruined city, crumpled in wheelchairs, abandoned on highways.
Echoing the mayor's prediction, Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Saturday she expected the death toll to reach
the thousands. And Craig Vanderwagen, rear admiral of the US Public Health Service, said one morgue alone, at a St. Gabriel prison, expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies.
The last refugees at the Superdome and the convention centre climbed aboard buses Saturday bound for shelters, but the dying continued.
Touring an airport triage centre, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., a physician, said "a lot more than eight to 10 people are dying a day."
Most were those too sick or weak to survive. But not all.
Charles Womack, a 30-year-old roofer, said he saw one man beaten
to death and another commit suicide at the Superdome. Womack was beaten with a pipe and treated at the airport centre, where bodies were kept in a refrigerated truck.
"One guy jumped off a balcony. I saw him do it. He was talking to a lady about it. He said it reminded him of the war and he couldn't leave," he said.
Three babies died at the convention centre from heat exhaustion, said Mark Kyle, a medical relief provider.
But some progress was evident. The last 300 refugees at the Superdome were evacuated Saturday evening, eliciting cheers from members of the Texas National Guard who had been standing watch over the facility for nearly a week as some 20,000 hurricane survivors waited for rescue.
On Sunday, utilities planned to send trucks into the city to assess storm damage for the first time since Katrina struck. Morgan Stewart, a spokesman for electricity provider Entergy Corp., said the National Guard would escort the company's vehicles.
The convention centre was "almost empty" after 4,200 people were removed, according to Marty Bahamonde, a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Earlier estimates of the crowd climbed as high as 25,000.
Thousands of refugees dragged their meager belongings to buses, the mood more numb than jubilant. Yolando Sanders, who had been stuck at the convention centre for five days, was among those who filed past corpses to reach the buses.
"Anyplace is better than here," she said.
"People are dying overthere."
Nearby, a woman lay dead in a wheelchair on the front steps. A man was covered in a black drape with a dry line of blood running to the gutter, where it had pooled. Another had lain on a chaise lounge for four days, his stocking feet peeking out from under a quilt.
By mid-afternoon, only pockets of stragglers remained in the streets around the convention centre, and New Orleans paramedics began carting away the dead.
The exact number of dead won't be known for some time. Survivors were still being plucked from roofs and shattered highways across the city. President Bush ordered more than 7,000 active duty forces to the Gulf Coast on Saturday.
"There are people in apartments and hotels that you didn't know were there," Army Briq. Gen. Mark Graham said.
The overwhelming majority of those stranded in the post-Katrina chaos were those without the resources to escape and, overwhelmingly, they were black.
"The first few days were a natural disaster. The last four days were a
man-made disaster," said Phillip Holt, 51, who was rescued from his home Saturday with his partner and three of their ageing Chihuahuas. They left a fourth behind they couldn't grab in time.
Tens of thousands of people had been evacuated from the city, seeking safety in Texas, Tennessee and many other states.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry warned Saturday that his enormous state was running out of room, with more than 220,000 hurricane refugees camped out there and more coming. Emergency workers at the Astrodome were told to expect 10,000 new arrivals daily forthe next three days.
In Washington, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta announced that more than 10,000 people had been flown out of New Orleans in what he called the largest airlift in history on US soil. He said the flights would continue as long as needed.
Thousands of people remained at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, where officials turned a Delta Blue terminal into a triage unit. Officials said 3,000 to 5,000 people had been treated at the unit, but fewer than 200 remain. Others throughout the airport awaited transport out of the city.
"In the beginning itwas like trying to lasso an octopus. When we got here it was overwhelming," said Jake Jacoby, a physician helping run the centre.
Airport director Roy Williams said about 30 people had died, some of them elderly and ill. The bodies were being kept in refrigerated trucks as a temporary morgue.
At the convention centre, people stumbled toward the helicopters, dehydrated and nearly passing out from exhaustion. Many had to be carried by National Guard troops and police on stretchers. And some were being pushed up the street on office chairs and on dollies.