Search for bodies ends; students return to Catholic school

NEW ORLEANS -- The search for Hurricane Katrina victims has ended in Louisiana with a death toll at 964, but more searches will be conducted only if someone reports seeing a body, a state official said Monday.

State and federal agencies have finished their sweeps through the city, but Kenyon International Emergency Services, the private company hired by the state to remove the bodies, is on call if any other body is found, said Bob Johannessen, a spokesman with the state Department of Health and Hospitals.

"There might still be bodies found -- for instance, if a house was locked and nobody was able to go into it," Johannessen said.

Last week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it had completed its role in the search because its specialties were no longer needed, including getting to bodies in attics or other hard-to-reach places or in buildings that may be structurally unsound.

FEMA did nearly 23,000 thorough room-to-room searches in New Orleans with about a dozen teams of emergency workers.

Mississippi's death toll remained at 221.

There were signs of normalcy in the city Monday -- five weeks to the day since Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast.

St. Andrew the Apostle elementary school was the first Catholic school reopened in New Orleans. A week ago, residents were allowed to return to the school's Algiers neighborhood of 57,000 people across the Mississippi River that largely escaped flooding.

"My heart is just bursting," said teacher Jewell McCartney, fighting back tears as she welcomed back her class of sixth-graders. "I just want to give them all a hug."

Archdiocese officials said their schools also were reopening in areas outside the city.

Some public schools in nearby parishes also opened Monday, but public schools in New Orleans remain closed. Officials are developing a plan to reopen some by November, depending on environmental, health and safety concerns.

As the halls of St. Andrew sprang back to life, administrators were keenly aware that each student came back with a new set of life experiences -- some worse than others.

There also were new faces to welcome. As of Friday, 82 new students had registered and several others were on a waiting list for the school with a normal enrollment of about 800 students.

"I'm thrilled to see so many students, and I'm thrilled to see them in classrooms where we feel they have a place to be," Principal Sybil Skansi said. "We just know the kids, whose smiles we saw today, are also hurting."

The school sent home an "assessment sheet" for every student, to get a handle on each child's situation. Some have damaged homes, or may have lost family members. Some may be displaced or have friends and relatives staying with them.

The school will hold grief groups to help students who need it.

The Rev. Paul Hart, pastor at the parish connected to the school, went from classroom to classroom, making the students laugh.

"It's like a resurrection," he said of the first day back. "Kids bring life to any place."

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continued pumping water out of the lower Ninth Ward. Efforts to rebuild the levees that breached, causing water to cascade into the city, remained under way. However, two canals near the area were closed on Monday as a precaution, because of stronger-than-normal winds and higher tides, said spokesman Alan Dooley.

As of late afternoon, a steady stream of water leaked through the repaired levees.

Electricity had been restored to about 36 percent of New Orleans customers and to about 99 percent of the customers in neighboring Jefferson Parish, said Entergy Corp. spokesman Chanel Lagarde.

And as another sign that the city was coming back to life, nine ships, including four container vessels, are scheduled to call on the Port of New Orleans this week, port officials announced.