New Orleans Ready To Make Comeback

Mayor Says Parts Of City Will Reopen Next Week

(CBS/AP)  The reopened areas represent 182,000 residents out of a city of nearly half a million.

"We will have life. We will have commerce. We will have people getting into their normal modes of operations, and the normal rhythm of the city of New Orleans that is so unique," the mayor said. He added: "It's a good day in New Orleans. The sun is shining. ... We're going to bring this city back."

"People love this city, and I think they're going to want to come back and see us. They're going to want to support us," Kurt Weigle of the New Orleans Downtown Development District told CBS News correspondent Steve Futterman.

Nagin said there should be power in areas where people will be allowed back. But the water will be good only for flushing toilets, not for drinking and bathing, he said.

The mayor said major retailers will use the city's Convention Center to supply returning residents with food, wood and other things they will need.

The return will mark the start of what the mayor said will probably be the biggest urban reconstruction project in U.S. history.

"My gut feeling right now is that we'll settle in at 250,000 people over the next three to six months and then we'll start to ramp up over time to the half-million we had before and maybe exceed," he said. "I imagine building a city so original, so unique that everybody's going to want to come."

The death toll in Louisiana climbed to 474 on Wednesday, and it was expected to rise further as state and federal officials went about the monumental task of collecting the bloated and decayed corpses and identifying them through DNA. The total death toll in five states reached 710.

In Thursday's editions of The New York Times, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency criticized Blanco's response to the hurricane, describing widespread confusion in Louisiana.

Michael Brown said he made repeated phone calls to the secretary of Homeland Security and the White House warning of the problems.

"I truly believed the White House was not at fault here," said Brown, who resigned under fire over the government's sluggish response to the disaster.

The White House's Bartlett told The Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith (video) that, while the laws and custom give governors the lead in emergencies such as this, the Bush administration did consider stepping in.

"About 24, 48 hours after the storm had hit and when the flooding really happened and we were having the problems with security in New Orleans, we were debating within the administration of invoking a very rare act, the Insurrection Act, to try to bring some chain of command structure to the effort," Bartlett said.