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ARABI, La. - Just after 9:30 a.m. Sunday, Michelle Lorino and E.J. Boudreax passed through a checkpoint. They maneuvered their pickup around an obstacle course of fallen trees, downed power lines, misplaced houses.
They came to see their house one last time.
Inside, patches of mold dotted the walls. Sludge thickly coated the newly restored hardwood floors. Furniture was strewn about the house, making walking impossible.
And then there was the smell - an overwhelming stench that led Lorino to pull her blue T-shirt over her nose.
"I think it would be better to be gone than to see this mess," said Lorino, 36, as she surveyed an orange laundry basket that did not belong to her in a tree in the front yard. "It's bad. It's really bad. ... It's completely destroyed."
Residents in St. Bernard Parish, one of the areas hardest-hit along the ravaged Gulf Coast, were allowed to return over the weekend to their homes for the first time since Hurricane Katrina struck three weeks ago. No one was allowed to stay, just to retrieve an item or two - if they could find anything.
They will enter in stages until all 66,000 residents are allowed to return. About 2,000 were allowed back on Sunday, from dawn to dusk. Another 4,000 can come back today. Other parishes are following suit, and New Orleans is expected to allow some residents back as soon as today.
Katrina's eye passed directly over St. Bernard, a low-lying parish east of New Orleans. A 20-foot storm surge flooded virtually all 27,600 homes and left a gray film over the entire area that burned throats and stung eyes.
Hundreds of homes were completely washed away. Officials estimate 50 to 80 percent of the houses that remain standing will have to be torn down and rebuilt.
"I don't think most people are going to be building back," said Brad Fitte, standing outside his childhood home, where he and his father had lowered the American flag in the front yard to half staff.
Few came this weekend to even see the damage.
Those who did wore boots, face masks and rubber gloves. They were not allowed to take any large items back with them for fear of contamination. A spill at a nearby Murphy Oil refinery made some areas off-limits.
American Red Cross volunteers greeted residents with bottled water and tetanus shots. They smiled, gave out hugs and provided therapists for "psychological first aid."
Just inside the parish, a welcome sign erected before Katrina read: "St. Bernard Parish: Building a better future."
Every few blocks, residents had to show identification to National Guard troops. Few cars or trucks were on the road; most were military or rescue workers. A truck had "Animal Rescue" scrawled on the window.
On Sunday afternoon, National Guard troops found a man who had been there since before Katrina. Disoriented, he emerged when rescue workers checked on his house.
"Are people back in their houses after the storm?" Rene Johnson, 39, asked rescue workers when he came out of the house wearing grungy sweat clothes and a baseball cap. He was examined, and taken away on a stretcher after asking what day it was.
In St. Bernard Parish, residents are being told they might not be able to come back until next summer.
Entire homes had moved, pulled off their foundations. Boats and sheds were stuck in streets. The water had disappeared, and sun had dried the gray sludge until it crunched underfoot.
Dingy water lines circle each home like rings around dirty bathtubs. Each home was marked with paint indicating when it was checked for stranded people and the number of dead.
From the outside, some of the houses looked like they had little damage. Inside, it was a different story.
On Center Street, Dona Celestin tried to open the door to her mother's house, where she grew up. The back door was warped. The front door opened but the ceiling had caved in and walking through the house was precarious.
Wearing a pair of gray overalls over a New Orleans T-shirt, Celestin cried as she emerged from the brick house, clutching two small black velvet bags. Each held a strand of pearls.
Celestin, 44, took off her face mask and called to her two girlfriends, sisters who grew up down the street. "All she wanted was her pearls," Celestin said, of her mother, Elsie, 82, who would never see her house of more than 60 years again.
They tried to shut the front door so they could leave, but it wouldn't close.
"It doesn't matter if the doors shut," Celestin's husband, Fred, called out. "They can have it."