NEW ORLEANS - With much of central New Orleans finally cleared of hurricane refugees, search teams widened operations yesterday to outlying streets, moving house to house with orders to evacuate all remaining residents from the city.

Determined to re-establish order, the police shot several people and killed at least two after gunmen opened fire at or near a group of contractors traveling across a bridge on their way to make repairs, authorities said.

PRESTON GANNAWAY / Monitor staff New Hampshire National Guardsmen say a prayer for peace during a brief service yesterday at the naval air base in New Orleans. Zoom Purchase Photos Online

Mortuary teams also began the gruesome task of collecting corpses still floating in floodwaters, trapped inside buildings or abandoned on highways after the devastating storm that deluged the city seven days ago. Officials warned that the death count - which Louisiana officials put at 59 yesterday - is sure to rise exponentially.

"I think it's evident it's in the thousands," Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt said yesterday on CNN before he headed to the area, echoing predictions made last week by city and state officials.

"We need to prepare the country for what's coming,"Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on Fox News Sunday.

"We are going to uncover people who died, maybe hiding in houses, you know, got caught by the flood -people whose remains are going to be found in the street."

PRESTON GANNAWAY / Monitor staff New Hampshire troops watch as unit from other states are deployed from a base in New Orleans. Zoom Purchase Photos Online

Louisiana officials again accused the Bush administration of being slow to respond to the flooding of New Orleans and then trying to shift the blame to state and local governments.

Chertoff, along with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, toured the storm-ravaged region, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Mobile, in her native state of Alabama. At a news conference and in TV interviews, Chertoff declined to get drawn into discussions of the government's initial response efforts, trying to keep the focus on major challenges ahead.

Although some water has drained out of the city, a significant amount of New Orleans remains deep under water. Officials predict that drainage operations will require weeks or months.

Many of the tourist sites in New Orleans appeared relatively unscathed. Yesterday afternoon, a caretaker swept the leaves from in front of Cafe Du Monde, a city landmark. In the French Quarter, residents and shopkeepers tended to their buildings. The mansions along St. Charles Avenue in the Garden District showed little damage, most of it to trees.

Dan Packer, president and CEO of Entergy New Orleans, said yesterday afternoon that he expected to bring lights to at least parts of downtown by that night. "I feel confident that apart of the central business district will be lit up tonight and the rest tomorrow," he said. "As the city drains, we're going to get fixing."

Other parts of the city, including New Orleans East, Lakeview and the Ninth Ward, still lie submerged.

Episodes of looting that peaked Wednesday have dramatically diminished, as the police and National Guard troops patrol the streets of the French Quarter and the business district. People raiding stores beyond the downtown appear to be focused on supermarkets and drugstores, where they can commandeer essential supplies.

Helicopter-borne rescue teams from the Army, Navy and Coast Guard expanded their range yesterday, moving beyond the business district to drop supplies onto streets and fields, and to ferry people out.

"We're going to have to go house to house in this city," Chertoff said during a televised news conference in Louisiana. "We're going to have to check every single place to find people who may be alive and in need of assistance. This is not going to happen overnight."

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