ACROSS miles of ravaged neighbourhoods of clapboard houses, grand estates and housing projects, workers struggled to find corpses and persuade the city’s last stubborn residents to leave.

Using the unmistakable threat of force, police and soldiers went house to house to try to coax the last 10,000 or so survivors of Hurricane Katrina to leave storm-shattered New Orleans because of the risk of disease from the putrid, sewage-laden floodwaters.