NEW ORLEANS – Workers here were picking up trash yesterday, a small miracle under the circumstances. The airport opened to cargo traffic. A bullhorn-wielding volunteer led relief workers in a chorus of “Amazing Grace.”

Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Katrina’s onslaught, the day was marked by signs that hopelessness was beginning to lift in this shattered city. While the final toll from the disaster remains unknown, there were indications New Orleans had begun to turn a corner.

“You see the cleaning of the streets. You see the people coming out,” a volunteer with a bullhorn, Norman Flowers, said. “The people aren’t as afraid anymore.”

Flowers, deployed by the Southern Baptist Convention, stood in the bed of a pickup truck on Canal Street, leading police, firefighters, and relief workers in song, punctuated by the exuberant honk of a fire truck nearby.

“This is a sign of progress,” said a New Orleans resident, Linda Taylor, gesturing at the impromptu gathering. “Last Sunday, I couldn’t find any church services. This Sunday, people have gathered together to worship.”

Numerous residents were able to visit their homes for the first time, however briefly, as floodwaters receded and work crews cleared trees, debris, and downed telephone poles from major streets.

Albert Gaude III, a Louisiana State University fisheries agent, was among those returning for the first time since the storm.

“They wouldn’t let us in before, but we made it now and we could drive all the way here with no problem,” he said.

President Bush flew to New Orleans later yesterday and spent the night.Today, he plans to tour the devastated town of Gulfport, Miss.

The Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport reopened for cargo traffic yesterday, and limited passenger service was expected to resume Tuesday, the airport director, Roy Williams, said.

Mr. Williams said he expects about 30 departures and arrivals of passenger planes a day – far below the usual 174 – at the airport, where a week ago terminals became triage units and more than two dozen people died.

Authorities raised Louisiana’s death toll to 197 yesterday, and recovery of corpses continued. Teams pulled an unspecified number of bodies from Memorial Medical Center, a 317-bed hospital in uptown New Orleans that closed more than a week ago after being surrounded by floodwaters.

Trash collection began over the weekend, a service unimaginable in the apocalyptic first days after Katrina’s fury battered the Gulf Coast and broke holes in two levees, flooding most of New Orleans.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin was asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” whether New Orleans could stage Mardi Gras in February 2006. “I haven’t even thought that far out yet,” he said.

But he added, “It’s not out of the realm of possibilities. … It would be a huge boost if we could make it happen.”

Mr. Nagin declined to say when the city might be drained of floodwaters.

“But I always knew that once we got the pumps up, some of our significant pumps going, that we could accelerate the draining process,” he said. “The big one is pumping station six, which is our most powerful pump, and I am understanding that’s just about ready to go.”

Army Lieutenant General Russel Honore, the commander of active duty troops engaged in hurricane relief, told CNN’s “Late Edition” the number of dead would be “a heck of a lot lower” than dire initial projections of 10,000 or more. Recovery of corpses continued yesterday.

Throughout the shattered city, many of the thousands of the troops and relief workers paused to reflect – some to mark the fourth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks, some simply because it was Sunday.

Tommy Hendricks, who owns a small apartment house in the French Quarter, returned to his ground-floor apartment and found it damaged by squatters who took refuge there – empty bottles and clothes strewn about.

“It’s on life support,” he said of his neighborhood, “but it’s not dead.”