NEW ORLEANS -- For a half a year, the people of New Orleans have counted the dead and struggled mightily to keep their city among the living. A slimmed-down Mardi Gras is testament to their success; a tour of the devastation that remains shows how far they have to go.
Still, there were some promising signs of recovery this weekend in the French Quarter, as the streets filled with revelers, many in costumes or T-shirts with slogans taking aim at government officials.
At the intersection of Bourbon and St. Peter, Pat O'Brien's is once again serving its potent Hurricane cocktail. But walk to Rampart Street and head east. The debris comes in bits: A small pile of siding. A rusted box spring. One taped-up refrigerator. At first, you find them in neat piles in the front yard or on the curb.
There's still a semblance of order. But keep going. It gets worse.
You pass an elegant sofa lodged in the middle of an intersection. A few miles farther, the innards of decaying houses spill out on both sides of the road.
Six months have passed since Katrina ravaged this city, killing by official count 1,080 in Louisiana and 231 in Mississippi. Nearly 2,000 people are listed as missing, many buried in the rubble or washed to sea.
The hurricane also created an estimated 60.3 million cubic yards of debris in Louisiana, 25 times as much as the ruins of the World Trade Center and enough to fill the Superdome more than 13 times. Of that, only 32 million cubic yards -- a bit more than half -- has been removed.
Mayor Ray Nagin says a comparison to New York City should be a favorable one. ''Let me remind you that after 9/11 in New York, it took them six to eight months to get out of the fog of what happened to them. And to date, there's still a big hole in the ground. So when I look at everything that's going on, I think we're right on schedule," he said.
Indeed, in the French Quarter and on St. Charles Avenue, on Magazine Street, and in the plantation-style mansions of Uptown, life has moved on, though blue tarpaulins that serve as roofs for many are a constant reminder of the work left to be done.
In the Quarter, chef Paul Prudhomme is blackening his signature redfish again. Bourbon House is shucking oysters, and Antoine's, the 166-year-old dining icon, is dishing up plates of Pompano Pontchartrain. Although the restaurants are short-handed, signs of the storm are subtle.
But in the Ninth and Lower Ninth wards and East New Orleans, Katrina laid waste to more than 215,000 homes. Many are abandoned, their doors wide open.
Only an estimated 189,000 of the city's roughly 500,000 pre-Katrina residents have returned. For now, the city is overwhelmingly whiter and more affluent than it was before.