As Hurricane Katrina evacuees prepare to attend school in cities such as San Antonio, Texas, there is word that the death toll from Katrina may be less than had been feared. But as of Thursday -- a week and a half after the hurricane hit the U.S. Gulf Coast -- there still are no definitive numbers.

Estimates had run as high as 10,000 dead in New Orleans, but the actual body count so far is lower than that and officials who had feared the worst now hope the terrible predictions were wrong.

The recovery of Katrina's victims speeded up in the last two days.

Searchers are now going door-to-door in the New Orleans neighborhoods where the water has fallen enough to look inside flooded homes.

In what may be their last peaceful pass before they get tough, rescuers were finding many stragglers finally ready to flee the filthy water and the stench of death in New Orleans.

"Some are finally saying, 'I've had enough'," said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman Michael Keegan. "They're getting dehydrated. They are running out of food. There are human remains in different houses. The smells mess with your psyche."

The job of carrying out the mayor's evacuation order was left largely to the 1,000 or so remaining members of New Orleans' beleaguered police force.

"We are not going to be rough," said Police Chief Eddie Compass. "We are going to be sensitive. We are going to use the minimum amount of force."

By Thursday, Mississippi had recorded 201 deaths and Louisiana 83, and other states had much lower numbers.

In Mississippi teams have been recovering bodies since hours after the storm struck on Monday last week.

The results in both places have encouraged some officials to hope the body count may not reach the predicted heights.

"I am thinking we are better off than we thought we'd be," said Louisiana state Sen. Walter Boasso, who represents St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans, parts of which still sit under more than two metres of water.

The authorities are ready in case the number of deaths rises dramatically. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has brought 25,000 body bags to the Gulf region.

A morgue in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, is capable of processing 140 corpses a day and officials planned to handle more than 5,000 bodies.

Delays in New Orleans

When a hurricane strikes, local officials usually announce death tolls within days as searchers retrieve bodies from crushed buildings and crumpled cars.

New Orleans is different. The flood waters in the city sit stagnant in low-lying areas, preventing rescue crews from searching thousands of houses that are up to their eaves in polluted water.

In the first week after the disaster, officials and politicians discussed the possible death toll reluctantly, often only after being pressed by journalists.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin suggested as high as 10,000 under such questioning. Louisiana U.S. Sen. David Vitter said his "guesses" started at 10,000, but made it clear he had no factual basis for saying that.

Clusters of corpses have been found in some areas. In St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans, at least 32 deaths were confirmed at one nursing home. But there have been few instances of this type of thing.

Hundreds of thousands fled the Gulf coast before the storm, spurred by "mandatory" evacuation orders, which in the United States are not enforced by police.

Rescuers plucked thousands more from streets, levees, roads and rooftops. At least 32,000 were rescued and another 70,000 were evacuated from New Orleans after the storm, according to official figures.

Some feared thousands were trapped in attics and would succumb to the water or the heat. But rescuers later found many damaged roofs where residents chopped through with axes.

In Mississippi Gulf towns, there is little stench of death compared to devastated regions of Indonesia after the tsunami.

In the rural areas east of St. Bernard Parish, some bodies will never be found because alligators will have taken them away, locals said.

Other Hurricane Katrina related news on Thursday:

• The Army Corps of Engineers said New Orleans was still about 60 percent flooded -- down from as much as 80 percent last week -- but was slowly being drained by 37 of the 174 pumps in the Orleans, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, and 17 portable pumps. It could take months to get the area pumped dry.
• In Washington, President Bush declared Sept. 16 as a national day of prayer.
• Congress approved an additional US $51.8 billion in emergency aid for the victims.
• Vice President Dick Cheney visited the region amid persistent criticism of the sluggish pace of the federal response.
• New Orleans' City Council met for the first time since Katrina at Louis Armstrong Airport, with members defending how they handled the disaster.
• Vowing to re-build the city, Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge Morrell said: "New Orleans was here before there was a United States of America."
• Some 400,000 homes in the city are without power, with no immediate prospect of getting it back. Where water has been restored, it is not drinkable.
• The city is still dangerous from the sewage-laden floodwaters, which are believed to contain E. coli and other dangerous germs.
• At least 11 blazes burned across the city, including a rash of fires that raged across the campus of historically black Dillard University, detstroying three large buildings.
• Across town at the Audubon Zoo, curator Dan Maloney said some of the 1,400 animals were lost, but keepers have been too busy caring for survivors to take a count. The dead included two sea otters that were moved to different tanks before Katrina and died from stress.
• U.S. officials and consumer advocates said birth certificates and other sensitive documents left among the waterlogged debris could put the storm's victims at heightened risk for identity theft.
• Tropical Storm Ophelia strengthened into a hurricane as it stalled 110 km off the northeast Florida coast.
• With two space shuttle facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina and hundreds of workers left homeless, NASA is reassessing the prospects of launching another shuttle mission next year.
• A Mexican army convoy rolled into the United States Thursday with food, water and medicine for Hurricane Katrina victims, the first Mexican military operation on U.S. soil in 90 years.
• Utilities and the U.S. Department of Energy said fewer than 725,000 electricity customers still lacked power 10 days after the hurricane pummeled the U.S. Gulf Coast.
• The Department of Energy estimated that U.S. oil and natural gas production and distribution operations would return to normal by December.
• Canadian Insurance company Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. says its initial estimate of losses relating to Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast is in the range of US $175 million to US $220 million.
• The Rolling Stones will put donation booths at concerts of their current "A Bigger Bang Tour." The band announced a donation of US $1 million to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund.