A day after the deadly pickup truck attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans, law enforcement agencies appeared to have wrapped up most of their initial investigative work and called in street cleaning trucks in preparation for the reopening of the popular tourist destination.
City leaders have not yet said whether Bourbon Street will reopen for visitors in time for the Sugar Bowl game, now scheduled for 4 p.m. Eastern on Thursday after being postponed following Wednesday’s attack. But Sidney Torres, the chief executive and owner of IV Waste, a New Orleans company that holds the street cleaning contract for the city’s historic French Quarter, said that beer trucks and other service vehicles would soon be allowed into the street.
F.B.I. and police officials gave permission at midnight for all of the street to be cleaned except for a few areas where investigators were still working, and those areas were then designated for cleanup a short time later, at 2:30 a.m., Mr. Torres said early Thursday in an interview at the corner of Canal Street and Bourbon Street, where the attack began.
Many police patrol cars had left Canal Street overnight. A mobile law enforcement communications truck also left, another sign that there could be less police activity in the area than in the initial hours after the attack.
As dawn approached and the sky began to lighten, the streets remained almost empty. Brenda Rice, a tourist from Macon, Ga., stood outside smoking a cigarette and compared the silence to what Bourbon Street was like when she returned to her hotel just minutes before the attack.
“It was packed — we were all having to hold each other’s hands to get through the crowd,” she recalled.
A hotel worker, Jake William, who was walking past Bourbon Street on his way to work before dawn, predicted the neighborhood would return to its rollicking form following the rescheduled Sugar Bowl, a college football playoff matchup between Notre Dame and Georgia.
“Tonight after the game,” he said, “it’ll be busy.”
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