Katrina Devastation Called 'Overwhelming'

The Associated Press, Aug. 30, 2005

GULFPORT, Miss. (AP) -- Rescuers in boats and helicopters searched for survivors of Hurricane Katrina and brought victims, wet and bedraggled, to shelters Tuesday as the extent of the damage across the Gulf Coast became ever clearer. Mississippi's governor said the death toll in one county alone could be as high as 80.

"At first light, the devastation is greater than our worst fears. It's just totally overwhelming," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said the morning after Katrina howled ashore with winds of 145 mph and engulfed thousands of homes in one of the most punishing storms on record in the United States.

In New Orleans, meanwhile, water began rising in the streets Tuesday morning, apparently because of a break on a levee along a canal leading to Lake Pontchartrain. New Orleans lies mostly below sea level and is protected by a network of pumps, canals and levees. Many of the pumps were not working Tuesday morning.

Officials planned to use helicopters to drop 3,000-pound sandbags into the breach, and expressed confidence the problem could be solved within hours.

Along the Gulf Coast, tree trunks, downed power lines and trees, and chunks of broken concrete in the streets prevented rescuers from reaching victims. Swirling water in many areas contained hidden dangers. Crews worked to clear highways. Along one Mississippi highway, motorists themselves used chainsaws to remove trees blocking the road.

Tens of thousands of people will need shelter for weeks if not months, said Mike Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And once the floodwaters go down, "it's going to be incredibly dangerous" because of structural damage to homes, diseases from animal carcasses and chemicals in homes, he said.

As of Monday night, more than 37,000 people were in American Red Cross shelters along the Gulf Coast, the organization reported.

Officials warned people against trying to return to their homes, saying that would only interfere with the rescue and recovery efforts.

Looting broke out in Biloxi and in New Orleans, in some cases in full view of police and National Guardsmen. On New Orleans' Canal Street, the main thoroughfare in the central business district, looters sloshed through hip-deep water and ripped open the steel gates on the front of several clothing and jewelry stores.

More than 1,600 Mississippi National Guardsmen were activated to help with the recovery, and the Alabama Guard planned to send two battalions to Mississippi.

"We know that last night we had over 300 folks that we could confirm were on tops of roofs and waiting for our assistance. We pushed hard all throughout the night. We hoisted over 100 folks last night just in the Mississippi area. Our crews over New Orleans probably did twice that," Capt. Dave Callahan of the Coast Guard Aviation Training Center in Mississippi said on ABC.

National Guardsmen brought in people from outlying areas to the Superdome in the backs of big 2 1/2-ton Army trucks. Louisiana's wildlife enforcement department also brought people in on the backs of their pickups. Some were wet, some were in wheelchairs, some were holding babies and nothing else.

In New Orleans, a city of 480,000 that was mostly evacuated over the weekend as Katrina closed in, those who stayed behind faced another, delayed threat: rising water. Failed pumps and levees apparently sent water from Lake Pontchartrain coursing through the streets.

The rising water forced one New Orleans hospital to move patients to the Louisiana Superdome, where some 10,000 people had taken shelter, and prompted the staff of New Orleans' Times-Picayune newspaper to abandon its offices, authorities said.

Downtown streets that were relatively clear in the hours after the storm were filled with 1 to 1 1/2 feet of water Tuesday morning. Water was knee-deep around the Superdome. Canal Street was literally a canal. Water lapped at the edge of the French Quarter. Clumps of red ants floated in the gasoline-fouled waters downtown.

"It's a very slow rise, and it will remain so until we plug that breach. I think we can get it stabilized in a few hours," said Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security chief.

Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi said there were unconfirmed reports of up to 80 deaths in Harrison County - which includes devastated Gulfport and Biloxi - and the number was likely to rise. An untold number of people were also feared dead in Louisiana. At least five other deaths across the Gulf Coast were blamed on Katrina.

"We know that there is a lot of the coast that we have not been able to get to," the governor said on NBC's "Today Show." "I hate to say it, but it looks like it is a very bad disaster in terms of human life."

As for the death toll in Louisiana, Blanco said only: "We have no counts whatsoever, but we know many lives have been lost."

The biggest known cluster of deaths was at the Quiet Water Beach apartments in Biloxi, a red-brick beachfront complex of about 100 units. Harrison County, Miss., emergency operations center spokesman Jim Pollard said about 30 people died there.

"This is our tsunami," Mayor A. J. Holloway of Biloxi, Miss., told The Biloxi Sun Herald.

Joy Schovest, 55, was in the apartment complex with her boyfriend, Joe Calvin, when the water began rising. They stayed despite a mandatory evacuation order.

"The water got higher and higher," she said, breaking into tears. "It pushed all the doors open and we swam out. We grabbed a lady and pulled her out the window and then we swam with the current. It was terrifying. You should have seen the cars floating around us. We had to push them away when we were trying to swim."

Teresa Kavanagh, 35, of Biloxi, shook her head is disbelief as she took photographs of the damage in her hometown.

"Total devastation. Apartment complexes are wiped clean. We're going to rebuild, but it's going to take long time. Houses that withstood Camille are nothing but slab now," she said. Hurricane Camille killed 256 people in Louisiana and Mississippi in 1969.

The hurricane knocked out power to more than 1 million people from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, and authorities said it could be two months before electricity is restored to everyone.

Oil prices jumped by more than $3 a barrel on Tuesday, climbing above $70 a barrel, amid uncertainty about the extent of the damage to the Gulf region's refineries and drilling platforms.

By midday Tuesday, Katrina was downgraded to a tropical depression, with winds around 35 mph. It was moving northeast through Tennessee at around 21 mph.

Forecasters said that as the storm moves north over the next few days, it could swamp the Tennessee and Ohio valleys with a potentially ruinous 8 inches or more of rain. On Monday, Katrina's remnants spun off tornadoes and other storms in Georgia that smashed dozens of buildings and were blamed for at least one death.

According to preliminary assessments by AIR Worldwide Corp., a risk assessment company, the insurance industry faces as much as $26 billion in claims from Katrina. That would make Katrina more expensive than the previous record-setting storm, Hurricane Andrew, which caused some $21 billion in insured losses in 1992 to property in Florida and along the Gulf Coast.

Mike Spencer of Gulfport made the mistake of trying to ride out the storm in his house. He told NBC that he used his grandson's little surfboard to make his way around the house as the water rose around him.

Finally, he said, "as the house just filled up with water, it forced me into the attic, and then I ended up kicking out the wall and climbing up to a tree because the houses around me were just disappearing."

He said he wrapped himself around a tree branch and waited four or five hours.

Anne Anderson said she lost her family home in Gulfport.

"My family's an old Mississippi family. I had antiques, 150 years old or more, they're all gone. We have just basically a slab," she told NBC. She added: "Behind us we have a beautiful sunrise and sunset, and that is going to be what I'm going to miss the most, sitting on the porch watching those."

Hurricane Katrina pummels four states
Hurricane Katrina killed at least 55 people, leveled numerous buildings and drove hundreds to their rooftops to escape floods.

The Miami Herald, Aug. 30, 2005

NEW ORLEANS - At least 55 people died, floods engulfed thousands of homes and shell-shocked survivors retreated to attics and wind-blown roofs Monday as one of the most sweeping hurricane disasters of modern times ravaged the upper Gulf Coast.

Mississippi authorities blamed Hurricane Katrina for 50 deaths, most in the collapse of an apartment complex in Biloxi, according to The Associated Press. Two people died in Alabama and at least three bodies were seen in New Orleans.

The casualty toll seemed certain to mount as conditions improved and rescue workers in boats and helicopters searched through the night and after daybreak today for victims.

In another measure of human misery, tens of thousands of people will need temporary housing for months, Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Monday night.

'I've never been so scared,' one of the newly displaced, Jean Jenkins of Moss Point, Miss., said after she, her husband, their two dogs and a cat spent seven hours in the attic of their one-story house before the water receded just enough for them to leave.

Katrina weakened slightly and wobbled toward the east just before reaching land, sparing New Orleans the cataclysmic devastation many had feared. But, most agreed, it was more than bad enough there and truly disastrous in parts of Mississippi and Alabama.

'We didn't know if we were going to live,' said Diana Chavez, one of 10,000 who spent the night at the Superdome, a refuge of last resort that lost part of its roof.

Katrina's core roared very close to the below-sea-level city of 485,000 people, slamming eastern sections with one edge of its destructive eye wall. Winds of 100 mph rocked the area.

Its storm surge and torrential rain submerged vast areas, with 40,000 homes flooded in St. Bernard Parish alone.

Moreover, the storm's sphere of influence stretched from Central Louisiana on the west to the Florida Panhandle on the east.

Triple-digit wind gusts were reported in Mississippi and Alabama. Damage reports mounted throughout the region: swamped bridges, overrun beaches, boats hurled ashore, countless smashed windows and ripped roofs.

Katrina pummeled 540 miles of coastline across four states, striking particularly hard at Gulfport, Miss.

Pat Sullivan, Gulfport's fire chief, said downtown buildings were 'imploding' and the business district was largely under water. A section of Interstate 10 near Gulfport was washed away. 'It's complete devastation,' Sullivan said.

More bad news: Late Monday, the first hard evidence emerged of possible gasoline supply disruptions. Valero Energy Corp. said its giant St. Charles, La., refinery was flooded, powerless and shut for at least a week.

About 1.3 million customers in the region were without power.

New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said that at least 20 buildings collapsed, including a small apartment complex. Countless windows shattered in high-rise buildings, the curtains of hotel rooms billowing in the wind.

Floodwaters breached at least two of the city's crucial flood-control levees, Nagin said, and three pumps failed. Portions of the historic, tourist-intensive French Quarter were battered, but little flooding was seen and the area fared reasonably well.

Hours after the storm hit, about 200 people remained atop their roofs in New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward, driven there by 10-foot floods.

Nagin said he was grateful the damage wasn't even worse, but he pleaded with residents not to return prematurely to whatever was left of their homes.

'Please be patient,' he said. ``There's nothing for you to come back to right now. There's water everywhere. . . . When are we going to get life back to normal? I don't know.'

And, not only before the storm passed but before its center even arrived, New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass said three people were arrested for looting. 'I couldn't believe it,' he said in a radio interview.

The city of Gulfport, 55 miles northeast of New Orleans and nearly under the storm's eye wall, suffered particularly severe blows.

Memorial Hospital and other hospitals sustained heavy damage, sailboats floated in the middle of U.S. 90, and casinos in the area were said to be deeply flooded.

Along the Mississippi coast, a 28-foot storm surge -- the wall of water that accompanies the center of a hurricane -- knocked homes and other buildings from their foundations. People trapped in attics and roofs begged for rescue but had to wait hours for assistance.

'We know some people got trapped and we pray they are OK,' said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour.

In Biloxi, six feet of water blocked Interstate 10 at the Biloxi River and local casinos were flooded. The Hard Rock Casino, scheduled to open next week, was extensively damaged. A church in nearby Long Beach was destroyed, as was the harbor.

In downtown Mobile, Ala., 12 feet of water flooded the convention center, the state docks, the metro jail, which had been evacuated, and dozens of other downtown structures. Whitecaps surged down the appropriately named Water Street.

Emergency workers helped 'dozens and dozens' of people who called during the storm to say water was rising into their homes, said Mobile police officer Eric Gallichant. 'Unfortunately there were some people it was impossible to get to,' he said.

A relatively small and weak hurricane when it rolled through South Florida late last week and killed nine people, Katrina blossomed into one for the record books after it reached the Gulf of Mexico and turned north.

Its core made landfall almost directly south of New Orleans as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane with 145-mph winds.

It weakened steadily as it moved inland but remained extremely dangerous, according to the National Hurricane Center, which warned of 10 inches of rain over the Ohio Valley and the manifest dangers of inland flooding as far north as Ohio.

When the storm's center reached land, its hurricane winds of at least 74 mph reached 125 miles from the center and its tropical storm winds of at least 39 mph stretched 270 miles from the center.

Back in New Orleans, the Hyatt Regency hotel near the Superdome reported windows and doors blown out and the walls buckled on the 22nd floor.

Hundreds of Hyatt guests and storm refugees were evacuated out of their rooms around midnight to a third-floor ballroom. They rested on bedspreads and pillows they dragged down from their hotel rooms. Children cried, dogs barked.

David Hadley, 43, of Chalmette, tried to stay in his room.

'The walls w