By SHARON COHEN, AP National Writer 1 hour, 22 minutes ago
NEW ORLEANS - Using the unmistakable threat of force, police and soldiers went house to house Wednesday to try to coax the last 10,000 or so stubborn holdouts to leave storm-shattered New Orleans because of the risk of disease from the putrid, sewage-laden floodwaters.
"A large group of young armed men armed with M-16s just arrived at my door and told me that I have to leave," said Patrick McCarty, who owns several buildings and lives in one of them in the city's Lower Garden District. "While not saying they would arrest you, the inference is clear."
A frail-looking 86-year-old Anthony Charbonnet grumbled as he locked his front door and walked slowly backward down the steps of the house where he had lived since 1955.
"I haven't left my house in my life," he said as soldiers took him to a helicopter. "I don't want to leave."
Mayor C. Ray Nagin ordered law officers and the military late Tuesday to evacuate all holdouts  by force if necessary. He warned that the combination of fetid water, fires and natural gas leaks after Hurricane Katrina made it too dangerous to stay.
In fact, the first government tests confirmed Wednesday that the amount of sewage-related bacteria in the floodwaters is at least 10 times higher than acceptable safety levels. Dr. Julie Gerberding, chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, warned stragglers not to even touch the water and pleaded: "If you haven't left the city yet, you must do so."
There were no reports of anyone being removed by force. And it was not clear how the order would be carried out.
Active-military troops said they had no plans to use force. National Guard officers said they do not take orders from the mayor. And even the police said they were not ready to use force just yet. It appeared that the mere threat of force would be the first option.
"We have thousands of people who want to voluntarily evacuate at this time," Police Chief Eddie Compass said. "Once they are all out, then we'll concentrate our forces on mandatory evacuation."
Mindful of the bad publicity that could result from images of weary residents dragged out of their homes at gunpoint, Compass said that when his officers start using force, it will be the minimum amount necessary.
"If you are somebody who is 350 pounds, it will obviously take more force to move you than if you are 150 pounds," the chief said.
The stepped-up evacuation came as workers trying to get into the city to restart essential services came under sniper fire. More than 100 officers and seven armored personnel carriers captured a suspect in a housing project who had been firing on workers trying to restore cell phone towers, authorities said.
"These cell teams are getting fire on almost a daily basis, so we needed to get in here and clean this thing up," said Capt. Jeff Winn, commander of the police SWAT team. "We're putting a lot of people on the street right now and I think that we are bringing it under control. Eight days ago this was a mess. Every day is getting a little bit better."
The police chief boasted that 7,000 more military, police and other law officers on the streets had made New Orleans "probably the safest city in America right now."
Across miles of ravaged neighborhoods of clapboard houses, grand estates and housing projects, workers struggled to find and count corpses sniffed out by cadaver dogs in the 90-degree heat. The mayor has said New Orleans' death toll could reach 10,000. Already, a temporary warehouse morgue in rural St. Gabriel that had been prepared to take 1,000 bodies was being readied to handle 5,000.
Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the state Department of Health and Hospitals, said the Federal Emergency Management Agency has 25,000 body bags on hand in Louisiana.
Asked if authorities expected as many as 25,000 bodies, he said: "We don't know what to expect."
"It means we're prepared," Johannessen said.
Marty Bahamonde, a FEMA spokesman, said the agency has hired a contractor to help remove bodies in the expectation that there may be large numbers of corpses.
"Nobody has any numbers or anything they're going by other than guesswork," Bahamonde said.
The enormity of the disaster came ever-clearer in neighboring St. Bernard Parish, which was hit by a levee break that brought a wall of water up to 20 feet high. State Rep. Nita Hutter said 30 people died at a flooded nursing home in Chalmette when the staff left the elderly residents behind in their beds. And Rep. Charlie Melancon said more than 100 people died at a dockside warehouse while they waited for rescuers to ferry them to safety.
The floodwaters continued to recede, though slowly, with only 23 of the city's normal contingent of 148 pumps in operation, along with three portable pumps. The water in St. Bernard Parish had fallen 5 feet.
John Hall, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said it was not clear how long it would be before all the pumps were running.
"There's a long way to go. We need to get a lot more capacity on line to make a real difference," he said.
Because of the standing water, doctors were being urged to watch for diarrheal illnesses caused by such things as E. coli bacteria, certain viruses, and a type of cholera-like bacteria common along the warm Gulf Coast.
Given the extent of the misery, Louisiana's two U.S. senators  Democrat Mary Landrieu and Republican David Vitter  wrote a letter to Senate leaders Wednesday urging them to put aside partisan bickering in assigning blame over the federal response and focus on providing for victims.
"Please do not make the citizens of Louisiana a victim once again by allowing our immediate needs to be delayed by partisanship," they wrote.
Patricia Kelly was driven out of her home by flooding in the low-lying Ninth Ward and took up residence under a tattered, dirty green-and-white-striped patio umbrella in front of an abandoned barber shop. Despite the warnings, she refused to leave.
"We're surviving every day, trying to tolerate the situation by the grace of God. He's keeping us holding on just one day at a time," she said. "I'm going to stay as long as the Lord says so. If they come with a court order, then we'll leave."
Sgt. Joseph Boarman of the Army's 82nd Airborne Division, whose soldiers helped coax people from their homes, said he could almost understand the reluctance to leave: "It's their home. You know how hard it is to leave home, no matter what condition it's in."
In the high and dry French Quarter, 48-year-old Jack Jones said he would resist if authorities tried to force him out of the home where he has lived since the 1970s.
While the streets were strewn with garbage, rotting food and downed power lines, Jones kept his block pristine, sweeping daily, spraying for mosquitoes and even pouring bleach down drains to kill germs.
Jones said the sick, the elderly and people who lack supplies should be evacuated  but not folks like him. He has 15 cases of drinking water, a generator, canned ravioli, wine, coffee and three cartons of Marlboros.
"I've got everything I need," he said. "I just want to be left alone."
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Associated Press writers Cain Burdeau, Jerry Bodlander and Lauran Neergaard contributed to this report.
Thirty people died in the Gulf of Mexico resort of  when  demolished a water-side apartment block, Harrison County emergency operations center spokesman Jim Pollard told AP. However, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency has yet to confirm the news.

At least another twenty have died across the rest of Harrison County; this number is expected to rise. The Governor of the state of Mississippi has asked people to stay away from the area for several days. The towns of Biloxi and  took the brunt of the hurricane's 140mph+ winds after it veered away from New Orleans as it made landfall.

Three more people have been killed by falling trees and at least two died in traffic accidents resulting from the hurricane. Hundreds of people have been rescued by boat and helicopter from the roofs of houses cut off by flood water.

The hurricane has caused a  — the force of the winds has piled the waters of the Gulf of Mexico against the coastline, causing widespread flooding reaching at least a mile inland in places.

A levee on the  canal has broken in two places, causing massive flooding. Some parts of New Orleans are now under 20 feet of water. Flooding seems to have reduced to increasing at a rate of one inch an hour and Army Corps of Engineers are on the scene of the breaks. At aproximately 10:00 PM Central city officials confirmed that a major floodpump has failed, which could result in an additional nine feet of floodwaters.

The western part of New Orleans has been flooded after a two-block long stretch of the 17th Street Levee gave way on Monday afternoon. Much of the city lies below sea level and depends on flood defences to keep it safe. One hospital — that has 1,000 patients inside — has been surrounded by the water. The vice-president of the center has described seeing whitecaps on the waves of the water in a street outside.

A water main pipe has failed, meaning that tap water has been contaminated with flood water, and is no longer safe to drink.

The mayor of the city has described seeing "bodies floating in the water."

Some 10,000 people remain in the Superdome stadium, despite the electricity supply failing leaving the indoor stadium in darkness. The coverings of the concrete roof of the structure have been stripped away by the wind. 

Electricity supplies to 1.3 million people across the south eastern parts of the US have been damaged, and it could be months before power is restored to all affected.

Two oil rigs have broken free of their moorings in the Gulf of Mexico, and a third drifted into a bridge in Mobile Bay, Alabama.

Katrina has now been downgraded to tropical storm status as it moves northwards across the US, and wind speeds have dropped to 60mph. The current death toll does not include the 11 killed in Florida when Katrina struck there last week.