As the last weary refugees were evacuated from New Orleans late Saturday, the shattered city began 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 while 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, Governor Kathleen Blanco said 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.
PHOTO: NY TIMES
The last refugees at the Superdome and the convention center climbed aboard buses Saturday bound for shelters, but the dying continued.
Touring an airport triage center, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, 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 center, 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 center 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.
The convention center 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.
President Bush, meanwhile, ordered more than 7,000 active duty troops to the region and said he planned to return to the region Monday.
"In America, we do not abandon our fellow citizens in their hour of need," the president said.
Thousands of refugees dragged their meager belongings to buses, the mood more numb than jubilant. Yolando Sanders, who had been stuck at the convention center for five days, was among those who filed past corpses to reach the buses.
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 center, and New Orleans paramedics began carting away the dead.
At the convention center, 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.
Nita LaGarde, 105, was pushed down the street in her wheelchair as her nurse's 5-year-old granddaughter, Tanisha Blevin, held her hand. The pair spent two days in an attic, two days on an interstate island and the last four days on the pavement in front of the convention center.
"They're good to see," LaGarde said, with remarkable gusto as she waited to be loaded onto a gray Marine helicopter. She said they were sent by God. "Whatever he has for you, he'll take care of you. He'll sure take care of you."
LaGarde's nurse, Ernestine Dangerfield, 60, said LaGarde had not had a clean adult diaper for more than two days. ``I just want to get somewhere where I can get her nice and clean,'' she said.
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