Refrigerated trucks followed soldiers, police and other emergency personnel on a grim mission to collect perhaps thousands of bodies in the flood waters, on street corners and in homes where whole families died and have yet to be found.

Bodies had been left to float in the streets because rescuers were told to concentrate on the search for survivors.

Eric Larsen, a doctor based at New Orleans international airport, said soldiers from the 82nd Airborne and other law enforcement personnel "are doing house-to-house sweeps of the city".

"It started early this morning. They are going house-to-house where they are going to find people who are still holding out, some who are sick and unfortunately I am sure some bodies," he said.

Some corpses were tied to road signs and electricity poles so they would not float away. Others were marked with an "X" and covered with a blanket. But after a week in the suffocating heat of the New Orleans many have now decomposed beyond recognition.

Along with overflowing sewage, the bodies in New Orleans and along the coast have heightened fears of disease epidemics.

A morgue which can handle 1,000 corpses at a time opened Monday in the sleepy Louisiana town of St Gabriel, just south of the state capital, Baton Rouge.

Four federal Disaster Mortuary Operation Response Teams (DMORT) have been set up with pathologists, funeral directors, medical examiners, coroners and forensic technicians specialised in identifying badly decomposed bodies.

DMORT spent nine months retrieving and identifying the dead after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Collected bodies will go through the process of identification, finding a cause of death and informing family members.

The teams can process up to 144 bodies a day, officials said. "We will maintain dignity throughout this process," said Ron Ellis, a DMORT spokesman.

Authorities have not given a formal toll for the disaster after Hurricane Katrina, but several Louisiana leaders have said it is in the thousands. One senator predicted it would be more than 10,000.

"Each death is enough. It is horrible," said Dr Louis Cataldie, Louisiana, emergency medical director.

Vanessa Magee squeezed her eyes shut as she paddled past a body tied to an Interstate 610 road sign on Elysian Fields Avenue in eastern New Orleans. "I'm going to have nightmares," she said.

Her boyfriend, Roger Hart, pushed the small boat away from the sign so they could carry on floating down what was once a the wide boulevard.

But the receding water is revealing more of the grisly scene of death in the city, where the hurricane breached protective levees unleashing flood water that swamped whole districts.

Survivors told how filthy brown water rushed up through the floorboards.

Helicopters rescued people who had clawed through their attic roofs and waited for help outside. But many roofs are intact and front doors are closed.

Rescuers and neighbours fear what they will find in many houses.

"There's some people I want to check on, but I don't want to be the one to kick in the door and find them," said Hart, who went out to explore his district by boat.

Several bodies remained for days at the Superdome stadium where survivors gathered in chaotic conditions. Survivors who were flown away from other emergency shelters on road bridges and school roofs also left fast-rotting bodies behind.

Emergency workers who come upon them later will bring them to sites including the Superdome and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. >From there they will go to St Gabriel.

Family members who could not find their loved ones in refugee centers will eventually have access to a database of the dead, said Bob Johannessen, a spokesman for the state department of Health and Hospitals. After a while, unclaimed bodies will be buried.

related report
Morgue With 5,000 Capacity Set Up For Katrina Dead
Saint Gabriel, Louisiana (AFP) Sep 05 - The small Louisiana town of Saint Gabriel took on a grim role in the Hurricane Katrina relief operation Monday, with the opening of a special morgue capable of holding 5,000 bodies.

Medical officials said the facility, installed in a large warehouse not far from the state capital Baton Rouge, would be able to process 144 bodies a day with a staff of 100 working in shifts to keep it going around the clock.

The first bodies were expected to arrive Monday evening. Thousands are feared dead across the US Gulf Coast after Katrina slammed into the region one week ago, triggering widespread flooding and submerging New Orleans.

Todd Ellis, commander of the Disaster Mortuary Operational Response Team (D-MORT) that will operate the morgue, said the bodies would be brought to the facility in body bags transported by refrigerated trucks.

After cleaning, specialised forensic teams will gather and log personnel effects, photograph faces and any distinguishing marks, take dental x-rays and collect DNA samples.

"We want to treat these bodies with all respect and dignity," Ellis said.

In the case of bodies that have been swollen and disfigured by being in the water for a lengthy period, forensic specialist Corinne Stern said they could still be identified by extracting DNA from bone matter.

Finally, the bodies will be numbered, placed in fresh bags and then stored in refrigerated trailers.

In order to prevent families with missing members flooding to the morgue, officials said access would be barred to the public with state officials handling the process of helping relatives identify and claim victims.

They also requested that journalists not specify the facility's precise location.

Louis Cataldie, the head of Louisiana disaster medical services, said it was still unclear just how long the morgue would be needed.

"How long can the operation take? I don't know how much time it can take. It'll be dependent on the number of the casualties that are brought here," he said.

"I don't want people to be alarmed. I don't want to inflate these numbers. My God, isn't it horrible enough?" he added.

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