In another effort of "encouragement," a Louisiana State Police SWAT team armed with rifles confronted two brothers at their home in the Uptown section of New Orleans, leaving one sobbing. "I thought they were going to shoot me," 23-year-old Leonard Thomas said, weeping on his front porch. "That dude came and stuck the gun dead at my head." Original Article Signs of progress Levee breach plugged; floodwaters receding Wire services Sept. 6, 2005 12:00 AM NEW ORLEANS - A week after Hurricane Katrina struck, engineers on Monday plugged the levee break that swamped much of New Orleans, floodwaters began to recede and residents briefly returned home, but along with the good news came the mayor's direst prediction yet: Perhaps as many as 10,000 dead. Sheets of metal and repeated helicopter drops of 3,000-pound sandbags along the 17th Street Canal leading to Lake Pontchartrain succeeded Monday in plugging a 200-foot-wide gap, and water was being pumped from the canal back into the lake. State officials and the Army Corps of Engineers say that once the canal level is drawn down 2 feet, Pumping Station 6 can begin pumping water out of the bowl-shaped city. Some parts of the city already showed slipping floodwaters as the repair neared completion, with the low-lying Ninth Ward dropping more than a foot. In downtown New Orleans, some streets were merely wet rather than swamped. "We're starting to make the kind of progress that I kind of expected earlier," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said of the work on the break, which opened at the height of the hurricane and flooded 80 percent of the city up to 20 feet deep. In New Orleans, Nagin upped his estimate of the probable death toll in his city from merely thousands, telling NBC's Today show, "It wouldn't be unreasonable to have 10,000," though he didn't cite the basis for that statement. Biloxi, Miss., Mayor A.J. Holloway said he expected the death toll in his Mississippi city to exceed that of Hurricane Camille, which killed 200 people in 1969. As law enforcement officers and even bands of civilians, including actor Sean Penn, launched door-to-door searches of the city for survivors, they were running up against a familiar obstacle: People who had been trapped more than a week in damaged homes yet refused to leave. "We have advised people that this city has been destroyed," said Deputy Police Superintendent W.J. Riley. "There is nothing here for them and no reason for them to stay, no food, no jobs, nothing." Riley, who estimated fewer than 10,000 people were left in the city, said some simply did not want to leave their homes - while others were hanging back to engage in criminal activities, such as looting. Nagin said the city had the authority to force residents to evacuate but didn't say if it was taking that step. He did, however, detail one heavy-handed tactic: Water will no longer be handed out to people who refuse to leave. In another effort of "encouragement," a Louisiana State Police SWAT team armed with rifles confronted two brothers at their home in the Uptown section of New Orleans, leaving one sobbing. "I thought they were going to shoot me," 23-year-old Leonard Thomas said, weeping on his front porch. "That dude came and stuck the gun dead at my head." One officer, who did not give his name, said his team tried to make sure that the two men understood that food and water were becoming scarce and disease could begin spreading. Many of the 460,000 residents of suburban Jefferson Parish waited in a line of cars that stretched for miles to briefly see their flooded homes, and to scoop up soaked wedding pictures, baby shoes and other cherished mementoes. "A lot of these people built these houses anticipating some floodwater but nobody imagined this," sobbed Diane Dempsey, a 59-year-old retired Army lieutenant colonel who could get no closer than the water line a mile from her Metairie home. "I'm going to pay someone to get me back there, anything I have to do." "I won't be getting inside today unless I get some scuba gear," added Jack Rabito, a 61-year-old bar owner who waited for a ride to visit his one-story home that had water lapping to the gutters. With almost a third of New Orleans' police force missing in action, a caravan of law enforcement vehicles, emblazoned with emblems from across the nation and blue lights flashing, poured into the city to help establish order on the city's anarchic streets. Four hundred to 500 officers on New Orleans' 1,600-member force were unaccounted for. Some lost their homes. Some were looking for families. "Some simply left because they said they could not deal with the catastrophe," Riley said. Officers were being cycled off duty and given five-day vacations in Las Vegas and Atlanta, where they would also receive counseling. Nagin, the New Orleans mayor, said Sunday that all uniformed New Orleans officers would be pulled off the streets and sent for evaluation and counseling, but Riley offered no such indication Monday. "We feel the city is very secure," Riley said, though he reminded everyone of the magnitude of the challenge and the scale of the work that remained. "This was probably the greatest catastrophe in an American city." At a news conference in Baton Rouge, police Superintendent Eddie Compass denied officers deserted in droves, acknowledging some officers abandoned their jobs but saying he didn't know how many. Two police officers killed themselves. Another was shot in the head. Compass said 150 had to be rescued from 8 feet of water and others had gotten infections from walking through the murky soup of chemicals and pollutants in flooded areas. "No police department in the history of the world was asked to do what we were asked," Compass said. The leader of National Guard troops patrolling New Orleans declared the city largely free of the lawlessness that plagued it in the days just after the hurricane. And he angrily lashed out at a reporter who suggested search-and-rescue operations were being stymied by random gunfire and lawlessness. "Go on the streets of New Orleans, it's secure," said Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore. "Have you been to New Orleans? Did anybody accost you?" Hopeful signs of recovery were accompanied by President Bush's second visit to Louisiana that exposed a continued rift between state and federal officials over the slowness of a relief effort. The first significant convoy of food, water and medicine didn't arrive in New Orleans until four full days after the hurricane, and the mayor and others said some survivors died awaiting relief. The Times-Picayune, Louisiana's largest newspaper, published an open letter to Bush, called for the firing of every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. In Texas, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt declared a public health emergency for that state, saying it would speed up federal assistance to help almost 240,000 storm evacuees - the most of any state. The Associated Press, Cox News Service and Knight Ridder Newspapers