JELLYFISH!!??!!??
Excerpt:
Mayor C. Ray Nagin said the Ninth Ward, a particularly low-lying neighborhood in the below-sea-level city of 480,000 people, was flooded and 116 residents retreated to roof tops, waiting for help through howling wind.
At least three fires were reported in the area and one building collapsed there. In nearby Gretna, a motel also reportedly collapsed. Roofs are said to be ripping off countless homes and other structures.
Police and rescue crews said they were getting calls about medical conditions -- heart attacks, pregnancies and other urgent situations.
About 370,000 customers in southeastern Louisiana were without power.
New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass said three people were arrested for looting by 7:30 a.m. ''I couldn't believe it,'' he said in a radio interview.
Katrina made landfall south of New Orleans as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane with 145-mph wind. It weakened slightly as it moved inland and now has maximum sustained winds of 125 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Elsewhere along the upper Gulf Coast, Katrina -- not only viciously powerful but also ambitiously wide in sweep -- swamped bridges and overran beaches in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, and it hurled boats onto land in Mississippi.
''The wind is whipping now,'' Kate Magandy, city editor of the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald reported at 7:30 a.m. CDT. ``The roof on the building is creaking. You can hear the building's joints straining.''
Winds of 84 mph were registered in Mobile, Ala., 66 mph in Biloxi and 64 mph in Pascagoula, Miss., with much higher gusts throughout the regin.
Magandy reported that Gulfport Fire Chief Pat Sullivan successfully rescued a woman and her four children from their apartment after the roof ripped off.
Later, she relayed unconfirmed reports of water up to the second floor of the Beau Rivage Casino in Biloxi and water standing in the Grand Casino Biloxi.
In Gulfport, the business district was partially underwater and the wind shattered countless windows. Sullivan described the damage as ``massive.''