Hopelessness begins to lift in New Orleans
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-12 08:39

Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore, the commander of active duty troops engaged in hurricane relief, told CNN's "Late Edition" the number of dead would be "a heck of a lot lower" than dire initial projections of 10,000 or more. Recovery of corpses continued Sunday.

On CBS' "Face the Nation," Honore asked Americans to take care of hurricane evacuees and help reunite them with their families. "And there's light at the end of the tunnel here," he added.

Throughout the shattered city, many of the thousands of the troops and relief workers paused to reflect — some to mark the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, some simply because it was Sunday.

At a Sept. 11 memorial service in the Algiers neighborhood, firefighters from New York told their colleagues they understood the pain and frustration wrought by Katrina.

"I just want to see what's going to happen tomorrow. And tomorrow after that," said Capt. Mike Donaldson, a New Orleans firefighter who attended. "It starts looking up from here."

Pedro Uranga of the National Guard of New Mexico walks through a flooded street in Port Sulphur, 30 miles (48 km) south of New Orleans, September 10, 2005. Emergency workers collected the dead of New Orleans on Saturday, as hopes rose that the toll from Hurricane Katrina would fall short of the calamity once feared. [Reuters]

Step by small step, residents tried to re-establish pieces of the city's inimitable character.

Kenny Claiborne has been running what has become known as Radio Marigny from his front porch — no actual radio signal, only generator-powered speakers that carry music by local groups through the breeze down Chartres Street.

"We just got that feeling like, it's not the end anymore, it's the beginning now," he said.

Tommy Hendricks, who owns a small apartment house in the French Quarter, returned to his ground-floor apartment and found it damaged by squatters who took refuge there — empty bottles and clothes strewn about.

"It's on life support," he said of his neighborhood, "but it's not dead."

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