Toll Suspected to Soar as Body Recovery Begins

ST. GABRIEL, La., Sept. 5 -- Hurricane Katrina and the ensuing floods along the Gulf Coast could mark one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history, as the macabre task of locating and cataloguing its dead moves into its early stages. Officials estimate the death toll could rise to several thousand over coming days.

The search-and-rescue efforts in coastal communities of Louisiana and Mississippi are turning their focus to recovering the bodies, as workers attempt to reach isolated communities that were ravaged by high winds and flooding that reached rooftops. The more than 200 confirmed dead suggest a grimmer total, as rescuers break residential windows to find bodies floating in flooded houses, to discover victims under piles of tree limbs, wood planks and rocks, and to secure bodies found floating in the streets to fence posts.

Totals of the dead are elusive, say local, state and federal officials, because of great difficulty finding missing people trapped in nursing homes, office buildings and apartment complexes. Debris is piled more than 10 feet high in Mississippi. In New Orleans, the battle is against deep waters and completely obstructed roadways.

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin (D) told NBC's "Today" that "it wouldn't be unreasonable to have 10,000" dead as a result of the catastrophe, and Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) said thousands were probably killed.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, in Baton Rouge on Monday, warned that the death toll is "going to be an unhappy number."

Should that number reach near the 10,000 mark, Katrina could be remembered as the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. The September 1900 hurricane that swamped Galveston, Tex., left more than 8,000 dead. The San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906 claimed about 3,000 lives.

Mississippi's estimate of the dead is 150, but official death numbers are not released until a coroner has identified the body. In Hancock County, for example, rescue officials believe the announced total of 36 dead could easily rise to between 600 and 1,000. Rescuers there were going from house to house and leaving coded markings to indicate suspected deaths, and then moving on.

"It's access more than anything," said Mick Bullock, a spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency, who said there have been reports of people being trapped in their attics for the past week. "There's so much debris still blocking traffic. These local roads are really still covered up, and there are places we haven't been able to get to. . . . It's going to be an extensive and long process. The reality is that the death toll will climb."

Louisiana officials have counted 71 dead so far.

In St. Gabriel, a tiny hamlet south of Baton Rouge, La., the dead may soon outnumber the living.

In a cavernous warehouse, across from the local baseball field in this gritty town of 5,000, the bodies of those killed during Katrina's fury and its deadly aftermath started arriving yesterday.

Plucked from the filthy floodwaters, the bodies will be transported in refrigerated trucks to this temporary morgue. There, they will be washed, examined, photographed, fingerprinted and, eventually, released to their families when they have been identified. Seven refrigerated trucks were lined up to hold bodies for processing.