The floodwater in New Orleans is falling but the city still looks like a putrid Venice, where streets have become stagnant waterways and sailing is the most effective way to get around. In St Bernard parish, the district most badly hit by the flood and where thousands remain trapped, the sheriff's office has moved onto a paddle boat formerly used for pleasure cruises.
On Canal Street, in the heart of city's business district, rescue workers have set up a makeshift port from which little boats sail out to rescue those still trapped in flooded buildings. The teams wear protective clothing because the floodwater now has the same level of bacteria as raw sewage.
Only the living are ferried back and if rescue teams see a dead body floating, they tie it to a nearby tree or pole for collection later. Many workers have seen corpses but one told me they expected to discover the greatest horrors later, when they enter homes that have been flooded.
"There's widespread death but we think most of it is inside buildings," he said.
Some 25,000 body bags have arrived in the region in preparation for the collection, counting and identification of the dead. They could be hard to identify because features can become so bloated by water and decomposition that they are unrecognisable. Even race may be difficult to determine because skin becomes darker as a body decays.
At the Lamar-Dixon Expo centre, 45 miles outside New Orleans, local sheriff Jeff Wiley is organising help from law enforcement officers from around the country. Hundreds of sheriffs and police officers arrived within hours of the hurricane, sleeping in caravans and tents and working 18-hour search-and-rescue shifts.
On the other side of the complex, 2,000 people evacuated from New Orleans sleep on mattresses on the floor, safe and dry but with no early prospect of returning to homes or jobs.
A short, powerfully-built man with an easy, Southern manner and a packet of chewing tobacco on his desk, Mr Wiley said that 150 boats were rescuing people from the day after the hurricane struck.
"Their job was - get out there, bang on walls, chainsaw and axe through rooftops and get people out. They got hundreds of people in the first couple of days," he said.
When he arrived at the Superdome on Tuesday of last week, he found chaos - with hundreds of National Guard soldiers unable to communicate because their system was down and the New Orleans Police Department "non-viable" because of desertion.
"They had some corrupt cops and some chickenshit cops and they cut and run," he said.
With looting and violence out of control, Mr Wiley told Louisiana's governor, Kathleen Blanco, that New Orleans needed a massive, federal armed presence to restore order and accelerate the evacuation.
"Cops in general and sheriffs in particular are doers. We don't have a lot of board meetings. But these people meeting in Baton Rouge and Pennsylvania Avenue were looking at their flipcharts and PowerPoints while thousands of people were up to their necks in water. There may be a time for that but it's not when people are dying and need help now," he added.
Mr Wiley told the governor a key part of the law-enforcement strategy must be getting food and water to the people waiting in the Superdome and the convention centre.
"It was turning good people into thugs. We have 2,000 people here. It's the same poor people. Not a peep. Because they're not scared, they're not desperate, they're not hungry," he said.
As late as last Thursday night, there was indecision and confusion about federal efforts to help in New Orleans and Mr Wiley said that a really effective military presence was not in place until Monday evening - a full week after the hurricane struck.
"I'm not the president or the governor, and they know more than me, but when people are on rooftops trying to survive and 2,000 people are going crazy outside the Superdome, I'm pretty sure I could have got them some help quicker," he said.
Mr Wiley said the crime wave many predicted as evacuees moved from New Orleans through Louisiana and into Texas has not materialised.
"A lot of people expected it so much - 'These people are poor and black, that's what they do, isn't it?' - that they were almost disappointed when it didn't happen. But they all have to pass through here to get to where they're going and we're not experiencing more crime," he said.
A number of American commentators have suggested that race and class may have played a role in the federal government's slow response to the New Orleans disaster. But Mr Wiley believes the racial prejudice theory is a distraction from the real failure - to prepare, to co-ordinate and to move in quickly and aggressively.
"On 9/11, that was all upscale folks. There were not too many poor people there. But there was a commission that found the response there was too slow too. So if you ask me, my idea is it's bullshit," he said.