NEW ORLEANS – Searchers smashed through doors in New Orleans on Wednesday, bringing their hunt for the dead to homes that had been locked and to blocks hardest hit by Katrina’s flooding. Behind those doors, officials said they expected a sharply escalating body count even as the overall death toll passed 1,000.
“There still could be quite a few, especially in the deepest flooded areas,” said U.S. Coast Guard Capt. Jeffrey Pettitt, who is overseeing the retrieval of bodies. “Some of the houses, they haven’t been in yet.” Officials said searchers are beginning to find more children.
The death toll in Louisiana stood at 799 on Wednesday, an increase of 153 bodies since the weekend and nearly 80 percent of the 1,036 deaths attributed to Hurricane Katrina across the Gulf Coast region. Pettitt and other officials would not speculate on what the final tally could be. They said the effort could last another four to six weeks.
About 500 people are involved in the search of locked homes, the third and most intense phase of the recovery effort.
“We try not to destroy the homes, but we have to get inside,” said fire department Lt. Eric Baum. “Drastic circumstances call for drastic measures.”
Many homes are unsafe to enter, while others lay under piles of muck and debris. Some homes are so structurally unsound they are marked, “Do not enter,” and seemingly every house has mold growing from every surface.
The Army Corps of Engineers continued pumping the water left behind by Katrina and readying the city’s fractured levee system, in case the new storm took a sharp turn and targeted Louisiana.
In light of looming Hurricane Rita, engineers warned residents that the patched-up levees can only handle up to 6 inches of rain and a storm surge of 10 to 12 feet.
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