Kris Wartelle, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Charles Foti, said the office has been besieged with allegations of neglect that may have led to injuries or deaths at nursing homes and hospitals.

But Louisiana District Attorneys Association President Peter Adams said he would be surprised if such incidents were widespread. "What we've mainly seen is heroism," he said.

In Washington, Senate Republicans scuttled an attempt by Sen. Hillary Clinton to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to the hurricane.

Separately, a Senate committee opened a hearing on the disaster, with the panel's Republican chairwoman saying that changes instituted after Sept. 11 in the government's emergency-preparedness failed their first major test during Katrina.

With billions of dollars to boost disaster preparedness at all levels of government, "we would have expected a sharp, crisp response to this terrible tragedy," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "Instead, we witnessed what appeared to be a sluggish initial response."

President Bush prepared to travel to the state Thursday to deliver a prime-time televised speech to the nation.

Louisiana Transportation officials estimated Wednesday that about 1.2 million people were evacuated from the metro New Orleans area in the two days leading up to Katrina's Aug. 29 landfall, many of those people still scattered in other states.

A day after Nagin said the city is essentially broke, New Orleans' already beleaguered school system announced it would also need federal assistance to keep paying its teachers. The last paychecks were being made available at Western Union locations to 7,000 employees spread across the nation, but after that $13 million is doled out, the system will be out of money.

"The cash situation is dire," said William Roberti, with Alvarez & Marsal, a restructuring firm that has been working with New Orleans' public schools.

Across a shattered city, the most obvious sign of progress came in the form of flickering lights. About 168,000 customers were still without power in the New Orleans area, mostly in places still flooded, but that number had gone down 10,000 in a day.

"I can tell you the numbers are going to go by slowly because we've reached the flooded areas," said Morgan Stewart, a spokesman for Entergy Corp.

The Hibernia Corp., Louisiana's oldest bank whose landmark building was once the city's tallest, turned on its lights at sunset Wednesday. The bank is well-known for the colors that light up the building's cupola during the holidays.

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Contributing: Adam Nossiter, Brett Martel, Mary Foster, David Crary, Lisa Meyer.