Police officers and military troops carrying assault rifles went door to door through New Orleans seeking those who have holed up to avoid forcible eviction or those too dazed to know that the waters that still cover much of the city contain a poisonous mix of germs and chemicals.
''Individuals are at risk of dying,'' said Edwin Compass, the superintendent of the New Orleans police. ''There's nothing more important than the preservation of human life.''
Although it appeared Wednesday night that forced evacuations were beginning, on Thursday the authorities were still looking for those willing to leave voluntarily. The police said that the search was about 80 percent done, and that afterward they would begin enforcing Mayor Ray Nagin's order to forcibly remove residents.
Bush, in Washington, urged the nearly 1 million people displaced by the storm to contact federal agencies to apply for immediate aid. He praised the outpouring of private charity to the displaced, but said the costs of restoring lives would affect all Americans, as would the horror of the storm's carnage.
''The responsibility of caring for hundreds of thousands of citizens who no longer have homes is going to place many demands on our nation,'' the president said in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. ''We have many difficult days ahead, especially as we recover those who did not survive the storm.''
While Bush spoke, Vice President Dick Cheney was touring Mississippi and Louisiana, in part as an answer to the critics who have charged that the administration responded too slowly and timidly to the epic disaster. At a stop in Gulfport, Miss., a heckler shouted an obscenity at the vice president. Cheney shrugged it off, saying it was the first such abuse he had heard.
The confirmed death toll in Louisiana remained at 83 on Thursday. Efforts to recover corpses are beginning, although only a handful of bodies have been recovered so far.
Mississippi officials said they had confirmed 196 dead as of Thursday, including 143 in coastal areas, although Gov. Haley Barbour said he expected the toll to go higher.
He also said Thursday that electricity would be restored by Sunday to most homes and businesses in the state that could receive it.
No one would venture a prediction about when the lights would come back on in New Orleans.
The water continued to recede slowly in this flood-beaten city 10 days after Hurricane Katrina swept ashore and levees failed at several points, inundating the basin New Orleans sits in.
The Army Corps of Engineers has restored to operation 37 of the city's 174 permanent pumps, allowing them to drain 11,000 cubic feet of water per second from the drenched basin. When all the pumps are working, they can remove 81,000 cubic feet of water per second, said Dan Hitchings of the Corps.
It will be months before the breadth of the devastation from the storm is known. But a report by the Louisiana fisheries department calculated the economic loss to the state's seafood industry at as much as $1.6 billion over the next 12 months.
Across New Orleans, soldiers, National Guard troops and local law enforcement officers from across the country continued door-to-door searches by patrol car, Humvee, helicopter and boat, urging remaining residents to leave.
Maj. Gen. James Ron Mason of the Kansas National Guard, who commands about 25,000 guard troops in and around New Orleans, said his forces had rescued 687 residents by helicopter, boat and high-wheeled truck in the past 24 hours.
He said that National Guard troops, although carrying M-16 rifles, would not use force to evict recalcitrant citizens. That, he said, was a job for the police, not the Guard.Compass, the police superintendent, said that after a week of near-anarchy in the city, no civilians in New Orleans will be allowed to carry pistols, shotguns or other firearms of any kind. ''Only law enforcement are allowed to have weapons,'' he said.
But that order apparently does not apply to the hundreds of security guards whom businesses and some wealthy individuals have hired to protect their property. The guards, who are civilians working for private security firms like Blackwater, are openly carrying M-16s and other assault rifles.
Nearly two weeks after the floods began, New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers. While armed looters roamed unchecked last week, the city is now calm. The city's slow recovery is continuing on other fronts as well, local officials said at a late morning news conference. Pumping stations are now operating across much of the city, and many taps and fire hydrants have water pressure. Tests have shown no evidence of cholera or other dangerous diseases in flooded areas.
With pumps running and the weather here remaining hot and dry, water has visibly receded across much of the city. Formerly flooded streets are now passable, although covered with leaves, tree branches and mud.
Still, many neighborhoods in the northern half of New Orleans remain under 10 feet of water, and Compass said Thursday that the city's plans for a forced evacuation remained in effect because of the danger of disease and fires.
Compass said he could not disclose when New Orleans residents might be forced to leave en masse. The city's police department and federal law enforcement officers from agencies like U.S. Marshals Service will lead the evacuation, Compass said. Officers will search houses in both dry and flooded neighborhoods, and no one will be allowed to stay, he said.
Many of the residents still in the city said they did not understand why the city remained intent on forcing them out.
