Demolition of Homes Begins in Sections of New Orleans
By ADAM NOSSITER

NEW ORLEANS, March 6 — Shortly after noon Monday, in the ruined moonscape of the Lower Ninth Ward, a track excavator's giant teeth bit into the top of a broken, displaced house, and the process of clearing this city's most devastated area finally began.

It was a moment of fearful anticipation for New Orleans, the first demolitions of flooded homes in the six months since Hurricane Katrina. Three were razed on Monday after a process that was long delayed by legal challenges, physical obstacles and the difficulty in getting money to search for bodies that almost certainly still molder in some of the houses.

Army Corps of Engineers officials estimate some 12.5 million cubic yards of debris from demolished houses will have been removed in Orleans Parish alone when the process ends, roughly a year from now, representing perhaps as many as 25,000 houses. About 120 houses, nearly all in the Lower Ninth Ward, are set for immediate demolition.

Monday's work was a tiny step — barely 200 cubic feet of house. Yet when the crunching and biting began — mouthfuls of rafters deliberately chewed up, walls methodically crushed down — it was like a wrenching echo of the now-distant storm. The owner of the house, Herbert Warren Jr., a retired longshoreman, tried to remain stoic as the home he had lived in for 44 years was carted away.

"What can you say?" Mr. Warren said. "So many others got the same thing happen to them. It ain't just me."