Hurricane Katrina Rips La., Miss. Coasts

NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Katrina plowed into this below-sea-level city Monday with howling, 145-mph winds and blinding rain that flooded some homes to the ceilings and ripped away part of the roof of the Superdome, where thousands of people had taken shelter.

Katrina weakened overnight to a Category 4 storm and turned slightly eastward before hitting land about 6:10 a.m. CDT east of Grand Isle near the bayou town of Buras, providing some hope that this vulnerable city would be spared the storm's full fury.

But National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield warned that New Orleans would be pounded throughout the day and that Katrina's potential 15-foot storm surge, down from a feared 28 feet, was still substantial enough to cause extensive flooding.

"I'm not doing too good right now," Chris Robinson said via cellphone from his home east of the city's downtown. "The water's rising pretty fast. I got a hammer and an ax and a crowbar, but I'm holding off on breaking through the roof until the last minute. Tell someone to come get me please. I want to live."

Along the Gulf Coast, the storm hurled boats onto land in Mississippi, lashed street lamps and flooded roads in Alabama, and swamped highway bridges and knocked out power to 28,000 people in the Florida Panhandle. New Orleans, which was in particular peril because it is so low-lying, was ordered evacuated over the weekend, and an estimated 80 percent of its 480,000 residents complied.

At the Superdome, home to 9,000 storm refugees, wind peeled pieces of metal from the golden roof, leaving two holes that let water drip in. People inside were moved out of the way.

Others stayed and watched as sheets of metal flapped and rumbled loudly. From the floor, looking up more than 19 stories, it appeared to be openings of about six feet long. Outside, one of the 10-foot, concrete clock pylons set up around the Superdome blew over.

Scores of windows were blown out at some of New Orleans' hotels. At the Windsor Court Hotel, guests were told to go into the interior hallways with blankets and pillows and to keep the doors closed to the rooms to avoid flying glass.

At 10 a.m. EDT, Katrina was centered about 30 miles southeast of New Orleans. That put the western eye wall with some of the fiercest weather over New Orleans. The storms winds dropped to 135 mph as it pushed inland, threatening the Gulf Coast and the Tennessee Valley with as much as 15 inches of rain over the next couple of days and up to 8 inches in the drought-stricken Ohio Valley and eastern Great Lakes.

Katrina was a terrifying, 175-mph Category 5 behemoth — the most powerful category on the scale — before weakening.

Mayfield said at midmorning the worst flooding from storm surge was on the Mississippi coast, east of the eye, with the highest storm surge recorded so far at 22 feet in Bay St. Louis.

Along U.S. 90 in Mississippi, the major coastal route that is home to the state's casinos, sailboats were washed onto the four-lane highway.

"This is a devastating hit — we've got boats that have gone into buildings," Gulfport Fire Chief Pat Sullivan said as he maneuvered around downed trees in the city. "What you're looking at is Camille II."

In 1969, Hurricane Camille, a Category 5 storm, killed 256 people in Mississippi and Louisiana. Storm surges were measured at 24 feet in some places.

In Gulf Shores, Ala., which nearly a year ago was Ground Zero for Hurricane Ivan's destruction, waves crashed over the seawalls and street lights danced in the howling winds.

About 370,000 customers in southeastern Louisiana were without power, said Chenel Lagarde, spokesman for Entergy Corp., the main energy power company in the region.

In New Orleans' French Quarter, where the power went out at 6:35 a.m., hotel residents huddled inside in the midmorning darkness as winds howled, a horizontal rain pinged against the windows, and slate roof tiles tore off.

At the hotel Le Richelieu, the winds blew open sets of balcony french doors shortly after dawn. Seventy-three-year-old Josephine Elow of New Orleans pressed her weight against the broken doors as a hotel employee tried to secure them.

"It's not life-threatening," Mrs. Elow said as rain water dripped from her face. "God's got our back."

Elow's daughter, Darcel Elow, was awakened before dawn by a high-pitched howling that sounded like a trumpeting elephant.

"I thought it was the horn to tell everybody to leave out the hotel," she said as she walked the hall in her nightgown.

For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare scenario a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl of a city that is up to 10 feet below sea level in spots and relies on a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry from the Mississippi River on one side, Lake Pontchartrain on the other.

The fear was that flooding could overrun the levees and turn New Orleans into a toxic lake filled with chemicals and petroleum from refineries, as well as waste from ruined septic systems.

In the uptown area of New Orleans on the south shore of Lake Ponchartrain, floodwaters by 8 a.m. had already intruded on the first stories of some houses and some roads were impassable.

The National Weather Service reported that a levee broke on the Industrial Canal near the St. Bernard-Orleans parish line, and 3 to 8 feet of flooding was possible. The Industrial Canal is a 5.5-mile waterway that connects the Mississippi River to the Intracoastal Waterway.

Crude oil futures spiked to more than $70 a barrel in Singapore for the first time Monday as Katrina targeted an area crucial to the country's energy infrastructure, but the price had slipped back to $68.95 by midday in Europe. The storm already forced the shutdown of an estimated 1 million barrels of refining capacity.

Terry Ebbert, New Orleans director of homeland security, said more than 4,000 National Guardsmen were mobilizing in Memphis and would help police New Orleans streets.

The head of Jefferson Parish, which includes major suburbs and juts all the way to the storm-vulnerable coast, said some residents who stayed would be fortunate to survive.

"I'm expecting that some people who are die-hards will die hard," parish council President Aaron Broussard said.

The evacuation itself claimed lives. Three New Orleans nursing home residents died Sunday after being taken by bus to a Baton Rouge church. Don Moreau, of the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office, said the cause was probably dehydration.

Katrina, which cut across Florida last week, had intensified into a colossal Category 5 over the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico, reaching top winds of 175 mph before weakening as it neared the coast.

A hurricane warning was in effect for the Gulf Coast from Morgan City, La., to the Alabama-Florida line. Tornado warnings were posted for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

New Orleans has not taken a direct hit from a hurricane since Betsy in 1965, when an 8- to 10-foot storm surge submerged parts of the city in seven feet of water. Betsy, a Category 3 storm, was blamed for 74 deaths in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.

Evacuation orders also were posted all along the Mississippi coast, and the area's casinos, built on barges, were closed.

Katrina hit the southern tip of Florida as a much weaker storm Thursday and was lamed for nine deaths. It left miles of streets and homes flooded and knocked out power to 1.45 million customers. It was the sixth hurricane to hit Florida in just over a year.

Associated Press reporters Mary Foster, Holbrook Mohr, Brett Martel and Allen G. Breed contributed to this report.

You people should be ashamed of yourselves! Yes, people should've left when warned. But do you realize just how many people couldn't? Being a Louisiana resident, quite familiar with New Orleans, I know they rely primarily on public transit. The people that suffer with poverty, no where to go and no way to get there.... Can you just imagine the sheer and utter terror these people went through? My town was wiped of the map back in 57' by Hurricane Audrey, which was a category 4. It was so traumatizing for people, that the ones who surrvived still have a hard time talking about, and some won't even THINK of talking about it. Until you know first hand what this man must've been feeling, it'd be appreciated if you all could keep your horrible comments to yourselves. Thousands lost their homes, families, and everything they spent their lives gathering. I read a post from a 17 year old girl on another site saying she just wish she could find her mother.... Like I said before, you all should be ashamed of yourselves!

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/8/31/215819/873

The entire Parish under water after being hit with 150 mile an hour winds. Hundreds of families with no means of transportation at all.

... Why don't you make fun of that?

If you know of "what's to come", how in your right mind can you be ok with belittling people that couldn't get out? Put yourself in his shoes. You know you sure wouldn't be pulling out a deck of cards and playing Rummy while 150 mph winds rushed past your window as you were floating along the water.

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