In the Gentilly and Mid-City districts, waters were at least 1.3 metres (four feet) lower than on Sunday, thanks to 70 out of the city's 154 pumps now on stream and churning nine billion gallons a day back into Lake Pontchartrain.

At one industrial park, a traffic light which was flooded above the red light on Monday was fully visible, sticking up out of waters covered in a dirty green film left by the flood caused by the August 29 storm.

Many newly dry homes were left with the bright orange paint mark left by soldiers and rescue teams who have been going door-to-door by boat looking for survivors and bodies.

Many of the main residential districts were completely deserted. Homes appeared too badly damaged to be habitable and officials have said that 160,000 homes will have to be demolished.

The only sign of life was the cawing of crows. The carcasses of dead dogs and the detritus of those forced to flee the hurricane remained in the newly empty streets.

In an industrial district in eastern New Orleans, retreating waters revealed a bus garage with city buses with shattered windows and covered by the foul sludge.

Not far away, a speed boat was left high and dry in a gas station covered in dirty brown rings which showed how the water had retreated.

Military experts had estimated it would take up to three months to clear the city of floods from Hurricane Katrina, but they now say it should be dry by early October.

At the 17th Street Canal, where a levy breach sent murderous floods into New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck, pumps gushed with water contaminated with sewage, gasoline and toxic substances.

But water levels were clearly lower, and engineers said the area of the city covered in water was now steadily shrinking.

"We are pumping out nine billion gallons a day," said Susan Jackson, spokeswoman for the US Army Corps of Engineers, who have mended the breached levee and are in charge of the pumping effort.

"Eventually we are going to have a pooling effect, with lower lying areas retaining water, so then we will go in with smaller pumps and lay long lines of pipes to get it dry," Jackson told AFP.

At the levee, Al Lepuyade, who has lived on the Jefferson Parish side of the canal, on the opposite bank to the breach for all of his 67 years, shook his head at the devastation.

"If that levee had held, New Orleans would have been in pretty fair shape," he said. He is worried about two friends who had houses right behind the levee breach. "I haven't heard anything from them at all."

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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