As thousands of people prepare to start moving back into the jazz city this week, some will find their homes barely touched by Hurricane Katrina. Most will not be so lucky. Others may not find their homes at all.

Algiers was the first on the list for resettlement Monday under an ambitious plan to get 180,000 people back within a matter of days. It escaped the storm's wrath almost unscathed and saw no flooding.

People had already started returning the quiet neighbourhood at the weekend and were busy cutting overgrown lawns and hosing debris from the streets.

"This area never, ever floods. Ever. I used to be a real estate agent, that's one of the reasons I knew. It's on high ground," explains Jo Harsdorff, who was busy cleaning up after arriving home on Saturday.

She and husband Fritz, a retired newspaper editor, had already got their garden furniture and potted plants back out on the porch of their grand 19th century colonial-style house.

"This area is so old. This house is from 1896. It's withstood a lot of hurricanes and it withstood this one pretty well too," she explains.

"We have electricity, water and gas." The only major damage to the property was the loss of some siding and a couple of trees in the backyard that had crushed some decking.

"All our plants died and shed every leaf they ever had."

Even their cat, who they couldn't find when they left town a day before the hurricane struck on August 29, greeted them when they returned from Houston, Texas, where they had been staying with family.

"I think she's fatter now than when we left," Harsdorff says.

"When I was in Houston, all I could think was: if only I can get back to my front porch and drink my iced tea and talk to my neighbours."

"So many people lost so much and we've been so fortunate," she adds.

A truck driving through the neighbourhood featured a handwritten sign bragging: "Bite me Katrina! We're home."

One local church was still shut up, the only sign outside proclaiming "Jesus Saves."

The city's ninth ward, just the other side of the river, was less fortunate.

The mostly black neighbourhood is desolate, the only sign of life army heavy machinery clearing away tonnes of debris. Cars lie washed up in hedges. Fallen trees still block roads and the stench of decay wafts through the hot air.

The film of sludge that caked the floodwaters has been baked hard since the waters receded and now forms a dried mud mosaic that crackles underfoot.

Huge blocks of timber flotsam litter the area. A children's peddle car lies stranded on a fence where it was dumped by the retreating flood.

One of the only people to be found in the area is Ronald Williams, a mechanic in his late 30s, visiting his boarded-up house.

Here there is no electricity, no running water and many homes will have to be razed. The likelihood of anyone returning home even in a matter of months seems slight.

Williams stuck out the flood for 11 days on his raised porch. Neighbouring single storey homes display the grimy stains of the high tide around the tops of their windows.

"When the hurricane was in full force, the water was coming over this," he says, gesturing to the threshold of the porch.

"It was ludicrous, man. I was not ready."

"Damn, there was something wrong with that water. I watched that water turn from brown, with crabs, with shrimp and I watched all those fish start to float and die and then that water turned black and slimy," he says.

Surveying the outside of his home, he can't bring himself to go through the front door, knowing the likely state of the inside.

"You don't want to go inside, you don't want to see it. I don't want to see inside. If you go inside you gonna be hurt. I don't want to be hurt. I don't wanna look," he adds.

He had been walking around the neighbourhood, looking over neighbours' properties and the local church.

"The school over there, you can't walk through the doors, the smell will turn you around.

"When I left here, everything was straight. When I look around. I see certain things missing and that's what's killing me now. Who got here before us?" he asks.

He guesses he could be back in his home some time next year, but says his fate lies in when facilities can be hooked back up.

"It depends on the electricity and water, because that means you can start cleaning up," he explains.

"But it's gonna be a while."

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