Signs of life and hope stir in New Orleans

BUSINESS owners were issued passes into New Orleans city centre yesterday to retrieve vital records or equipment, as the city slowly stirred back to life two weeks after Katrina hit.

There were signs of life after a weekend in which trash collection began, the airport reopened to cargo flights and the waste water treatment plant was expected to be running by last night.

Military airplanes were set to begin spraying the region yesterday, with standing water expected to worsen Louisiana’s already considerable mosquito problem.

Among those who survived the hurricane at home, refused the subsequent order to leave and have started to clean up their neighbourhoods was John Lopez.

“I think it’s liveable,” he said. “If they got running water to all these buildings that are obviously inhabitable, they could get the city cleaned up a lot faster.”

Though half the city remains flooded and teams continue to collect corpses, there were signs of hopelessness beginning to lift.

“Each day there’s a little bit of an improvement,” said vice admiral Thad Allen, commander of relief efforts. One of the businessmen allowed back into the city was Terry Cockerham, owner of Service Glass, which installs windows.

“We’ll work seven days a week until we get this job finished. I don’t want to get rich. I just want to get everything back right,” he said.

57-year-old Donald Jones said he was no longer armed when walking his street.

“The first five days I never went out of my house without my gun. Now I don’t carry it,” he said.

Authorities raised Louisiana’s death toll to 197 on Sunday, as teams pulled an unspecified number of bodies from Memorial Medical Center, a 317-bed hospital that closed more than a week ago after being surrounded by floodwaters.

Army Lieutenant General Russel Honore, commander of relief troops, reiterated that the number of dead would be “a heck of a lot lower” than initial projections of up to 10,000.