Back in New Orleans, walk-up stragglers at the Convention Center were checked by Navy medics before they were evacuated. Lt. Andy Steczo said he treated people for bullet wounds, knife wounds, infections, dehydration and chronic problems such as diabetes.

"We're cleaning them up the best we can and then shipping them out," Steczo said.

One person he treated was 56-year-old Pedro Martinez, who had a gash on his ankle and cuts on his knuckle and forearm. Martinez said he was injured while helping people onto rescue boats. "I don't have any medication and it hurts. I'm glad to get out of here," he said.

In a devastated section on the edge of the French Quarter, people went into a store, whose windows were already shattered, and took out bottles of soda and juice.

A corpse of an elderly man lay wrapped in a child's bedsheet decorated with the cartoon characters Batman, Robin and the Riddler. The body was in a wooden cart on Rampart Street, one shoe on, one shoe off.

Rene Gibson, 42, driving a truck while hunting for water and ice, said people are not going to leave willingly. "People been (here) all their life. They don't know nothing else," he said.

Amid the tragedy, about two dozen people gathered in the French Quarter for the Decadence Parade, an annual Labor Day gay celebration. Matt Menold, 23, a street musician wearing a sombrero and a guitar slung over his back, said: "It's New Orleans, man. We're going to celebrate."

In New Orleans' Garden District, a woman's body lay at the corner of Jackson Avenue and Magazine Street — a business area with antique shops on the edge of blighted housing. The body had been there since at least Wednesday. As days passed, people covered the corpse with blankets or plastic.

By Sunday, a short wall of bricks had been built around the body, holding down a plastic tarpaulin. On it, someone had spray-painted a cross and the words, "Here lies Vera. God help us."