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Disease fear rises in New Orleans
By Thomas Farragher and Stephen Smith, Globe Staff | September 7, 2005

NEW ORLEANS --Fouled and filthy water slowly receded from this broken, nearly empty city yesterday, while officials tallying the dead worried about contamination and disease.

They also began to assess the severity of the damage that Hurricane Katrina caused to the Gulf Coast environment.

As four of the city's 148 pumps whirred to life, draining a murky brew of floodwater into Lake Pontchartrain, authorities braced for what might emerge as the water is drained.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin, after viewing his battered city from the air, said 60 percent of its terrain remained flooded, down from 80 percent in the immediate aftermath of the killer storm. Beneath the water, he said, lay a nightmarish soup of bodies, mosquitoes, fuel, and contaminants.

''It's going to be awful, and it's going to wake the nation up again," Nagin said.

Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, expressed concern that the debris-filled water would become a dangerous breeding ground.

''What I'm really worried about now is how many bodies we're going to find in there," she said. ''You've got dead animals in there. Spilled fuel.

''It's not going to be a pretty sight," Blanco said. ''My next big worry is contamination and disease."

Blanco implored residents who were still in the city to evacuate so the cleanup could begin in earnest, and so the potential threat of disease could be reduced.

Blanco said those who had stayed behind may have criminal records and fear incarceration, or may have mental health problems exacerbated by the destruction.

''We're going to coax them out," she said. ''We're bringing in chaplains to talk to them. We certainly don't want disease outbreaks. That's our next big worry, and that would be the next big tragedy."

In drier sections of the city, rescuers offered residents food if they agreed to leave. Those who didn't were no longer receiving supplies, officials said.

''These are people who tried to stick it out, but time and a lack of food has worn them down," said one rescue worker, Brady Devereaux, a Texas firefighter. ''So we are using food to lure them out."

The US Army Corps of Engineers said hundreds of pumps are on their way to New Orleans to speed the city's draining. It remained unclear how many of the idle pumps already there could be repaired, but officials said they expected many would need to be replaced. Thirty-three new devices that have arrived in recent days should begin pumping soon.

''Hundreds of them are on order," said a corps spokesman, Tim Hitchings. The city should be dry in 24 to 80 days, he said.

In another sign of progress, the state said it plans to open bids Friday for temporary repair work on the 5.4-mile bridge that carries Interstate 10 over Lake Pontchartrain between New Orleans and Slidell. The bridge is impassable.

Brigadier General Michael Fleming of the National Guard said his troops have begun to ''embed" within the New Orleans Police Department, which has been staggered by the storm and its aftermath. Two officers have killed themselves, and many have quit.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said the recovery of bodies is underway. And Fleming said that if his troops, now numbering 40,000 in Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, are asked to assist in that grim duty, they will.

Mortuary teams have made plans to process more than 5,000 bodies. The federal Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team had three teams of 30 each from around the country ready to deal with the victims' remains. As of yesterday, the official count stood at 83. Some officials have said that Katrina's death toll could exceed 10,000.

''We're going to count one at a time," said Bob Johannessen, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Hospitals. ''It could take days. It could take years. It could take lifetimes."

The process of identifying the dead has not begun, officials said. Fleming said the process must be carried out ''with great dignity."

''I mean these people were somebody's mother, somebody's father," he said.

In the Garden District yesterday, roads that were a tangle of tree limbs and other detritus a few days ago had been cleared. They were under heavy patrol by National Guard troops, who stopped all civilian vehicles to ask drivers about their reason for being in the city as well as their destination.

But fire broke out at a large house in the Garden District, a neighborhood of antebellum mansions, and flames leaped from one house to another, consuming several by midmorning.

In all, firefighters battled at least four major fires, with smoke in the air uptown and downtown as the military ferried in water on helicopters.

The deputy police chief, Warren Riley, said that authorities were not sure what had started the fires and that they did not have the resources to investigate; they had enough on their hands trying to rescue survivors who still remained stranded in eastern New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish. Highway overpasses were crowded yesterday with lines of trailers carrying skiffs, rafts, and airboats that launched off flooded exit ramps to search for survivors.

Michael D. McDaniel, secretary of the state Department of Environmental Quality, said that from oil spills to wrecked treatment plants, ruined marshland to spoiled fisheries, the hurricane's impact on the region's ecosystems is almost unimaginable in scope.

He said two major oil spills -- one measuring 68,000 barrels -- and overturned boats up and down the coast have left ''almost a solid sheen" on the region's waters. ''Everywhere we look, there's a spill," he said.

Twenty-five large sewage plants, and 500 smaller ones, have been damaged or wiped out.

From 140,000 to 160,000 homes in Louisiana have been destroyed, leaving behind what will be mountains of waste, he said.

In addition, critical protective marshland is now underwater.

Heavy metals will sink into the sediment of the lake. The oil eventually will dissipate, and the impact will be felt for years, but some marshland may eventually recover. ''One of the things about nature is nature is resilient," McDaniel said. ''Nature will recover."

Health officials said that so far, their worst fears about outbreaks of dysentery and typhoid have not materialized. Their central concern was that many evacuees lack treatment for diseases such as diabetes and mental illness.

Reports of illnesses are ''all over the map," said Dr. Hilarie Cranmer, a Brigham and Women's Hospital doctor who is in Baton Rouge helping the Red Cross.

''The biggest issue," she said, ''is that you've had a million people displaced from their doctors -- the diabetics, the hypertensives, the pregnant, the mentally ill.

''We're seeing people escalate in the shelters with mental illness because they don't have access to their normal medications," Cranmer said.

After a full week of finger-pointing, frustration, and anger, Blanco said it's time for news conferences and politics to take a back seat to a full-scale recovery.

''I think our resources are strengthening," she said. ''Those of us in the decision-making chairs are feeling better. The supply chain has improved the morale. We're putting families back together slowly but surely."

FEMA said 315,568 Louisiana households have registered for federal assistance. About 32,000 people have been rescued.

Some dry sections of the city could have running water within days.

The Air Force has finished its massive airlift of elderly and seriously sick patients from New Orleans's major airport.

A total of 9,788 patients and others were evacuated by air.

A critical portion of the recovery effort is being provided by members of the 249th Prime Power Battalion of the Army Corps of Engineers, which is commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Andy Backus, a Maine native.

Backus said some power lines remain intact in and around New Orleans, but areas to the east of there, where Katrina's winds were fiercest, most ferocious, have been demolished.

At the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and General Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, insisted there are plenty of forces to continue with the relief effort indefinitely.

''We have the forces, the capabilities, and the intention to fully prosecute the global war on terror while responding to this unprecedented humanitarian crisis here at home," Rumsfeld said. ''We can and will do both."

Myers reported that 41,000 National Guard troops and 17,000 active-duty forces from more than 40 states were on duty along the Gulf Coast supporting the efforts.

In Baton Rouge, law enforcement agencies announced the first federal arrest since the hurricane slammed ashore eight days ago.

Wendell Bailey was arrested and charged with being a felon in possession of firearms and attempting to destroy a military rescue helicopter.

Meanwhile yesterday, US Senator David Vitter said he met with the owner of the New Orleans Saints in an effort to get the team to play some games this year at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge.

''We are starting to see some significant progress," Nagin said. ''I'm starting to see rays of light."

Bryan Bender, Stephen Smith and Carey Goldberg of the Globe staff and correspondents Keith O'Brien and Kaitlin Bell contributed to this report, and material from wire services was used. Thomas Farragher can be reached at farragher@globe.com