25,000 body bags ready as New Orleans recovers dead

RESCUE teams hunted door to door in New Orleans yesterday searching for survivors, either trapped or hiding out, in the ruined city as 25,000 body bags were readied for a gruesome clean-up operation.

About 10,000 people are believed to be inside the flooded city, surrounded by a toxic soup of oil, chemicals, garbage, human waste and floating corpses since Hurricane Katrina wrecked the city 10 days ago.

Government tests confirmed that the floodwaters are thick with sewage-related bacteria in amounts at least 10 times higher than acceptable safety limits. The muck is believed to contain E. coli, certain viruses and a cholera-like bacteria.