On The Road To Recovery

NEW ORLEANS Workers here were picking up trash Sunday, a small miracle under the circumstances. The airport opened to cargo traffic. A bullhorn-wielding volunteer led relief workers in a chorus of "Amazing Grace."

Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Katrina, the day was marked by signs that hopelessness was beginning to lift in this shattered city. Although the final toll from the disaster remains unknown, there were indications New Orleans had begun to turn a corner.

"You see the cleaning of the streets. You see the people coming out," said the volunteer with the bullhorn, Norman Flowers. "The people aren't as afraid anymore."

Flowers, deployed by the Southern Baptist Convention, stood in the bed of a pickup on Canal Street, leading police, firefighters and relief workers in song, punctuated by the exuberant honk of a fire truck nearby.

"This is a sign of progress," said New Orleans resident Linda Taylor, gesturing at the impromptu gathering. "Last Sunday, I couldn't find any church services. This Sunday, people have gathered together to worship."

President Bush flew to New Orleans on Sunday to spend the night aboard the USS Iwo Jima, an amphibious assault ship that is serving as a control center in the relief efforts. He planned to tour Gulfport, Miss., today.

The Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport reopened for cargo traffic Sunday, and limited passenger service was expected to resume Tuesday, airport director Roy Williams said.

Williams expects about 30 departures and arrivals of passenger planes a day -- far below the usual 174 -- at the airport, where a week ago terminals became triage units and more than two dozen people died.

'Looking For Your Bathtub?'

Many residents were able to visit their homes for the first time, however briefly, as floodwaters receded. Work crews cleared trees, debris and downed telephone poles from major streets.

Albert Gaude III, a Louisiana State University fisheries agent, was among those returning for the first time since the storm.

"They wouldn't let us in before, but we made it now, and we could drive all the way here with no problem," he said.

Jane Smith, 52, spent the past two weeks in her nephew's home with 42 other relatives near Baton Rouge, La. His generosity in taking in the huge clan was great, she said, "but I can't take another night sleeping on the tile floor of the kitchen. That gets bad."

When the evacuation order was lifted, she piled into a car with some of her kin, joining the line of cars threading past police and National Guard checkpoints to get to her neighborhood.

"I can't go in yet," said a nervous Smith when she arrived. "I need a cigarette first," she said, fumbling with a box of Kools. The storm had peeled part of the siding from her home, pierced a window and sent trees crashing beside it.

But when she braved to go in, Smith found the tools she uses for work in a recycling plant and most of her belongings intact. She thinks the damage to the mobile home will probably force her to replace it.

Evidence of the recent tempest lay in the huge buoy anchor and tremendous logs that had been thrown over the nearby levee and into the street and lawns of Smith's community.

"Hey!" Smith yelled to her neighbor. "You looking for your bathtub? It's here in my yard."

Making Progress

Authorities raised Louisiana's death toll to 197 Sunday, and recovery of corpses continued. Teams pulled an unspecified number of bodies from Memorial Medical Center, a 317-bed hospital in uptown New Orleans that closed more than a week ago after floodwaters surrounded it.

Trash collection began over the weekend, a service unimaginable in the apocalyptic first days after Katrina battered the Gulf Coast and broke holes in two levees, flooding most of New Orleans.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin was asked on NBC's "Meet the Press" whether New Orleans could stage Mardi Gras in February. "I haven't even thought that far out yet," he said.

But he added, "It's not out of the realm of possibilities. ... It would be a huge boost if we could make it happen."

Nagin declined to say when the city might be drained of floodwaters.

"But I always knew that once we got the pumps up, some of our significant pumps going, that we could accelerate the draining process," he said. "The big one is pumping station six, which is our most powerful pump, and I am understanding that's just about ready to go."

The city's main wastewater treatment facility will be running today, said Sgt. John Zeller, an engineer with the California National Guard.

"We're making progress," Zeller said. "This building was underwater yesterday."

David Smith, a volunteer firefighter from Baton Rouge, said it's a sign of progress that people such as him are now in New Orleans aiding the city's recovery.

"We are helping people get the medicine they need," Smith said. "People who haven't been able to get prescriptions filled. That's a big step forward."

Step By Small Step

Army Lt. Gen. Russel L. Honore, the commander of active-duty troops engaged in hurricane relief, told CNN's "Late Edition" the death toll would be "a heck of a lot lower" than dire initial projections of 10,000.

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

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."

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 radio signal, only generator-powered speakers that carry music by local groups down Chartres Street.

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

Tommy Hendricks returned to his ground-floor apartment in the French Quarter 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."