US President George W Bush today said he planned to lead one of the investigations into the handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
Mr Bush said he was: "going to find out over time what went right and what went wrong". The President and his administration have come in for severe criticism over the slow response to the disaster.
The US Senate plans to conduct two inquiries of its own into the Hurricane which hit the Gulf Coast and New Orleans. However, this falls short of the demands from his opponents for a full independent inquiry.
President Bush
Remaining residents have been urged to leave the city, with officials describing it as uninhabitable. US army engineers in New Orleans have begun to pump water back into Lake Pontchartrain after they closed one of the main breaches in the levee system that allowed water to swamp much of the city.
Rescue crews are continuing to search the evacuated city for stragglers with authorities preparing for what the receding deluge would reveal.
With engineers starting to pump out the flooded authorities braced for the horrors the receding water is certain to reveal.
"It's going to be awful and it's going to wake the nation up again," the mayor warned. After an aerial tour, Mayor Ray Nagin said about 60 per cent of the city was under water, down from 80 per cent during the darkest hours last week.
"We are starting to see some significant progress. I'm starting to see rays of light," he said. Mr Nagin said it would take three weeks to remove the water and another few weeks to clear the debris.
It could also take up to eight weeks to get the electricity back on. Still, he warned that what awaits authorities below the toxic muck would be gruesome.
A day earlier, he said the death toll in New Orleans could reach 10,000. The Pentagon, meanwhile, began sending paratroopers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division to New Orleans to use small boats, including inflatable Zodiac craft, to launch a new search-and-rescue effort in flooded sections of the city.
Maj Gen William Caldwell IV, division commander, said about 5,000 paratroopers would be in place by tonight.
Efforts to evacuate those residents insisting on staying put were stepped up, with boat rescue crews and a caravan of law enforcement vehicles from around the country searching for people to rescue.
"In some cases, it's real easy. They're sitting on the porch with their bags packed," said Joe Youdell of
President Bush, who announced today he would lead an inquiry into the handling of Katrina.
the Kentucky Air National Guard.
"But some don't want to leave and we can't force them." Nagin warned: "We have to convince them to leave. It's not safe here. There is toxic waste in the water and dead bodies and mosquitoes and gas. ... Fires have been started and we don't have running water."
Earlier fire broke out at a house in the historic Garden District - a neighbourhood with mansions that date back before the 1860s US Civil War. National Guardsmen cordoned off the area as firefighters battled the blaze by helicopter.
At the same time, the effort to get the evacuees back on their feet continued on several fronts. Patrick Rhode, deputy director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said evacuees would receive debit cards so that they could begin buying necessary personal items.
He told ABC television the agency was going from shelter to shelter to make sure that evacuees received cards quickly and that the paperwork usually required would be reduced or eliminated.
The Air Force late last night concluded its huge airlift of elderly and serious ill patients from New Orleans' major airport.
A total of 9,788 patients and other evacuees were evacuated by air from the New Orleans area. Local officials bitterly expressed frustration with the federal government's sluggish response as the tragedy unfolded.
"Bureaucracy has murdered people in the greater New Orleans area. And bureaucracy needs to stand trial before Congress today," Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, said on CBS' "The Early Show."
"So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."
In addition to help from other Louisiana and Alabama departments, a Canadian task force of firefighters and police arrived four days after the storm, St Bernard Fire Chief Thomas Stone said.
"If you can get a Canadian team here in four days, US teams should be here faster than that," Chief Stone said. The frustrations were also felt along the Mississippi coast, where people who have chosen to stay or are stuck in demolished neighbourhoods scavenge for necessities.