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 News from Around the Americas | August 2005 
Louisiana Evacuees Urged To Stay Away
 CNN News
| | Cars in a parking lot in Mobile, Alabama, are surrounded by water caused by storm surge. |
New Orleans, Louisiana - Louisiana evacuees should stay away for at least a week to avoid "a wilderness" without power or drinking water that will be infested with poisonous snakes and fire ants, state officials warned Monday.
Looting was reported Monday in some areas of New Orleans where toppled walls flattened cars and winds gashed glass windows.
Elsewhere along the Gulf Coast and northern Mississippi, Hurricane Katrina continued to wreak havoc.
As of 5 p.m. ET Monday, Katrina was barely a Category 1 storm with 75 mph winds. It was centered about 30 miles northwest of Laurel, Mississippi, and hurricane-force winds extended for 60 miles, said the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida.
"We would really encourage people not to come back [to New Orleans] for at least a week," said Ivor van Heerden, director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes in Baton Rouge.
"If you came back, you would be coming literally to a wilderness," he said. "If your house is gone, it's gone. If you come back in a day or a week, it's not going to make any difference."
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said she had ordered state police to block re-entry routes to all but emergency workers.
After topping levees in New Orleans, Katrina inundated the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts with a 20-foot storm surge.
Streets of Biloxi, Mississippi, became flowing rivers up to 12 feet deep.
In Mobile, Alabama, the storm pushed Mobile Bay into downtown, submerging large sections of the city, and officials imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
An oil drilling platform broke away from its moorings and lodged under a bridge that carries U.S. Highway 98 over the Mobile River.
The Alabama National Guard activated 450 troops to secure Mobile. Two other Alabama battalions, or about 800 troops, were activated to assist in Mississippi.
At least 500,000 people were without power from Louisiana to Florida's Panhandle, including 370,000 in southeastern Louisiana and well over 100,000 each in Alabama and Mississippi.
Hurricane-force winds are likely to continue into the night as Katrina slowly diminishes and carries its wind and rain into central and north Mississippi, Tennessee and eventually Ohio, the National Hurricane Center said.
The storm came ashore Monday morning just east of New Orleans. Winds topping 140 mph transformed street signs, tree branches and roof debris into projectiles.
Rising water strained the system of levees and pumping stations that protect the low-lying city. About 70 percent of the city sits below sea level. (Full story)
Water poured over levees in Orleans and St. Bernard parishes, and pats of the city's east side were under 9 feet of standing water. See video of near whiteout conditions and debris-filled winds
Police in New Orleans and surrounding parishes received more than 100 calls from residents trapped on top of their roofs.
"Tell someone to come get me please. I want to live," resident Chris Robinson told The Associated Press via cell phone from his home east of downtown.
As the storm passed, Col. Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for New Orleans, said officials hope to take advantage of the remaining daylight hours to rescue the people they can. But high winds and flood waters were hampering the effort.
Report: 'Total structural failure'
The National Weather Service said it had received many reports of "total structural failure" in the New Orleans metro area. It did not elaborate, but video from the city showed crumbled walls in one neighborhood.
About 10,000 people, who were unable to evacuate the city, took shelter in the Louisiana Superdome - the cavernous football stadium that is home to the New Orleans Saints.
Reporter Ed Reams from affiliate WDSU told CNN that Katrina ripped away a large section of the building's roof.
Katrina's Floodwaters Inundating Gulf Coast
CNN News
| | Hurricane Katrina, shown in this close-up satellite radar image, made second landfall 35 miles southeast of New Orleans, Louisiana, at 7:10 am EST. Katrina, now a category four hurricane with 135 mph winds, heads for a third landfall at the Louisiana/Mississippi border. (Photo: The Weather Channel Interactive) |
New Orleans, LA - Parts of New Orleans are flooded with up to six feet of water Monday after some of the pumps that protect the low-lying city failed under the onslaught from Hurricane Katrina, Mayor Ray Nagin said.
Nagin said the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, on the east side of the city, was under five to six feet of rising water after three pumps failed.
WGNO, reporter Susan Roesgen, who is with the mayor at the Hyatt hotel, said New Orleans police had received more than 100 calls about people in the area trapped on their roofs.
The National Weather Service reported "total structural failure" Monday in some parts of metropolitan New Orleans, where Katrina brought wind gusts of 120 mph.
Katrina came ashore Monday morning in southeastern Louisiana with winds topping 140 mph.
At 11 a.m. ET, the National Weather Service said Katrina had degraded to a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds near 125 mph.
New Orleans prepared for a catastrophic direct hit from the powerful storm. About a million people fled the area, and about 10,000 people who couldn't leave hunkered in the mammoth Louisiana Superdome.
The National Hurricane Center said that the western eye wall was passing over the city at about 10 a.m. ET. (Watch video update on Katrina's path)
While the counterclockwise spin of a hurricane usually leaves the worst damage on its eastern edge, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers cautioned that "there's not really an easy side of a Category 4 storm" on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
CNN's John Zarella said that the wind was howling through the buildings in downtown New Orleans, ripping off chunks of debris and causing whiteout conditions.
He said that water was rushing down the street and had risen up to the wheel wells of parked cars.
Earlier, reporter Ed Reams from affiliate WDSU told CNN that Katrina ripped away a large section of the Superdome's roof. (See video of conditions within the darkened Superdome)
"I can see daylight straight up from inside the Superdome," Reams reported.
National Guard troops moved people to the other side of the dome. Others were moving beneath the concrete-reinforced terrace level.
About 70 percent of New Orleans is below sea level and is protected from the Mississippi River by a series of levees. (Full story)
NHC deputy director Ed Rappaport told CNN that New Orleans could expect a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet.
That surge wouldn't top New Orleans' levees, but CNN's Myers noted that "there may be a 20-foot surge, but there may be a 20-foot wave on top of that."
"It just remains to be seen," Rappaport added.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said it was too soon to feel any sense of relief.
"We don't know yet," she said. "We still have a long way to go throughout this day. We are watching. We are worried of course."
At 10 a.m. ET, the storm was centered about 30 miles east-southeast of New Orleans and 50 miles west-southwest of Biloxi, Mississippi. Hurricane force winds extended about 125 miles from the storm's center.
The storm was moving north at 15 mph.
The storm's eastern eye wall was approaching Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi.
Authorities in Gulfport told CNN that 10 feet of water cover downtown streets.
"There is intense damage," said CNN's Gary Tuchman from Gulfport. "We are watching the dismantling of a beautiful town."
"We are watching these building deteriorate and break down before our eyes," he said. "Because the water is so deep, boats are floating up the street. There is extensive damage here. This is essentially right now like hell on earth."
In Biloxi, CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano reported that wind gusts topping 100 mph were starting to pull the roofs off of nearby buildings. (Watch video report from Biloxi, Mississippi)
Hurricane warnings are posted from Morgan City, Louisiana, eastward to the Alabama-Florida state line, including New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. This means winds of at least 74 mph are expected in the warning area within the next 24 hours.
A tropical storm warning and a hurricane watch are in effect from the Alabama-Florida state line eastward to Destin, Florida, and from west of Morgan City to Intracoastal City, Louisiana. A tropical storm warning is also in effect from Intracoastal City, Louisiana, west to Cameron, Louisiana, and from Destin, Florida, eastward to Indian Pass, Florida.
A tropical storm warning means tropical storm conditions, including winds of at least 39 mph, are expected within 24 hours. A hurricane watch means hurricane conditions are possible, usually within 36 hours.
Isolated tornadoes are also possible Monday across southern portions of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, forecasters said.
Three Deaths in New Orleans
Three residents of a New Orleans nursing home died Sunday while being evacuated to Baton Rouge, said Don Moreau, chief of operations for the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office.
The 23 residents were supposed to stay at a church, where one of the bodies was found. The other body was found on a school bus and a third person died at a hospital, Moreau said.
The others were found to be suffering from various forms of dehydration and exhaustion, he said.
Moreau did not know whether authorities would term the deaths storm-related. "These people are very fragile," he said. "When they're loaded up on a school bus and transported out of New Orleans ..."
One person died in similar circumstances during evacuations from Hurricane Ivan, he said.
Katrina is blamed for at least seven deaths in Florida, where it made landfall Thursday as a Category 1 hurricane. As much as 18 inches of rain fell in some areas, flooding streets and homes.
Category 5 is the most intense on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Only three Category 5 hurricanes have made landfall in the United States since records were kept. Those were the Labor Day hurricane of 1935, 1969's Hurricane Camille and Hurricane Andrew, which devastated the Miami area in 1992. Andrew remains the costliest U.S. hurricane on record, with $26.5 billion in losses.
Camille came ashore in Mississippi and killed 256 people.
CNN's John Zarrella contributed to this report.
New Orleans Rocked by Hurricane Katrina
Adam Nossiter - Associated Press
| | A New Orleans city police car with its rear window broken is abandoned in flood waters on Canal Street in downtown New Orleans August 29, 2005, in advance of Hurricane Katrina. (Photo: Reuters) |
New Orleans - Hurricane Katrina pounded Louisiana on Monday and threatened to swamp low-lying New Orleans as it roared on a coastal path that will take it into neighboring Mississippi and Alabama.
The historic city was rocked by Katrina and its 135 mph (216 kph) winds after the storm came ashore from the Gulf of Mexico and roared along the coast.
The roaring winds sent debris flying through the streets, blew windows out of high-rise hotels and tore through the roof of the Superdome where 26,000 people had taken refuge from the dangerous storm.
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said in a news conference the damage had caused leaks and evacuees had been moved to dry areas in the stadium, but there was no immediate danger.
As 9 a.m. CDT, Katrina's center was 30 miles (48 km)south-southeast of New Orleans and the western wall of the eye was directly over the city, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. At 10 a.m. CDT it was downgraded to a Category 3 with maximum sustained winds of near 125 mph (201 kph).
Heavy rains poured down in sheets and the biggest fear was that the levees protecting the city from the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain would be topped by a massive storm surge.
"Please Pray for New Orleans" read a giant hand-painted sign, appearing to sum up the fears that had seized the city known as The Big Easy for its relaxed life and party atmosphere.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said on NBC's "Today Show" there was already "significant flooding" in the city, most of which lies below sea level.
"I've gotten reports this morning that there's already water coming over some of the levee systems," he said.
Weather experts have predicted that thousands of homes could be damaged or destroyed and a million people left homeless if the storm surge is too great for the levees to hold back.
Officials estimated that a million people had left the area ahead of the storm, which was once a fearsome Category 5 with winds of 175 mph (282 kph), but many chose to ride it out. It hit land as a Category 4 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.
WINDOWS OUT, POWER LOST
Artist Matt Rinard, who owns a business in the French Quarter, holed up on the fifth floor of a Canal Street hotel and watched the storm roll in.
He said pieces of sheet metal and plywood, billboards and pieces of palm trees flew down Canal, which borders the Quarter, as huge gusts of wind blew through the city.
"It's blustery. You can see the speed of it now, it's unbelievable," he said. "The power went out about an hour and a half ago and so now I'm just watching the occasional dumbass walking down Canal Street."
News reports said windows were being blown out of the big hotels near the French Quarter, forcing those inside to seek shelter in the hallways.
Utility company Entergy Corp. spokesman Morgan Stewart said 317,000 customers had lost power in the storm and that the number was expected to grow.
"We're preparing for catastrophic damage, particularly to the New Orleans area," Nagin said. "We expect it could take weeks to rebuild."
In Mobile, Alabama, 144 miles to the east of New Orleans, the storm slammed into transformers, knocking out power for about 200,000 people, and spawned a tornado near Brewton in Escambia County. Coastal flood warnings were issued.
In Gulfport, Mississippi, 73 miles west of Mobile, the storm's waves backed up the coastal resort's canal, flooding roads and endangering a nearby interstate highway.
The two states lie in the projected path of Katrina, which was expected to veer east from New Orleans.
In Baton Rouge, officials said three people from a New Orleans nursing home had died during their evacuation to a Baton Rouge church. They said they were among nearly two dozen people from the home who were on a bus stuck in traffic for hours during the 80 mile trip.
New Orleans has not been hit directly by a hurricane since 1965 when Hurricane Betsy blew in, flooding the city. The storm killed about 75 people overall.
Katrina was making its second U.S. landfall after striking southern Florida last week, where it caused widespread flooding and seven deaths.
As the storm plowed through the gulf, oil companies shut down production from many of the offshore platforms that provide a quarter of U.S. oil and gas production.
At least 42 percent of daily Gulf oil production, 20 percent of daily Gulf natural gas output and 8.5 percent of national refining capacity was shut on Sunday, producers and refiners said.
U.S. oil futures jumped nearly $5 a barrel in opening trade to touch a peak of $70.80. The rise in oil prices fed through to other financial markets, hurting stocks and the dollar on fears that economic growth might be curtailed but boosting safe havens such as government bonds and gold.
Hurricane Katrina Makes Landfall in Louisiana
Adam Nossiter - Associated Press
| | A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration infrared satellite image shows the center of Hurricane Katrina, situated about 90 miles to the south, southeast of New Orleans at about 5 a.m. EDT Monday, Aug. 29, 2005. (AP Photo/NOAA) |
New Orleans - Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore early Monday and charged toward this low-lying city with 145-mph winds and the threat of a catastrophic storm surge.
Katrina edged slightly to the east shortly before making landfall near Grand Isle, providing some hope that the worst of the storm's wrath might not be directed at the vulnerable city.
Martin Nelson, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center, said the northern part of the eyewall came ashore at about 5 a.m. It was moving northward at 15 mph.
Katrina's fury was quickly felt at the Louisiana Superdome, normally home of professional football's Saints, which became the shelter of last resort Sunday for about 9,000 of the area's poor, homeless and frail.
Electrical power at the Superdome failed at 5:02 a.m., triggering groans from the crowd. Emergency generators kicked in, but the backup power runs only reduced lighting and is not strong enough to run the air conditioning.
Katrina, which weakened slightly overnight to a strong Category 4 storm, turned slightly eastward before hitting land, which would put the western eyewall the weaker side of the strongest winds over New Orleans.
"It's not as bad as the eastern side. It'll be plenty bad enough," said Eric Blake of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Mayor Ray Nagin said he believed 80 percent of the city's 480,000 residents had heeded an unprecedented mandatory evacuation as Katrina threatened to become the most powerful storm ever to slam the city.
"It's capable of causing catastrophic damage," said National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield. "Even well-built structures will have tremendous damage. Of course, what we're really worried about is the loss of lives."
"New Orleans may never be the same."
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 will 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," said parish council President Aaron Broussard.
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 likely 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.
The storm held a potential surge of 18 to 28 feet that would easily top New Orleans' hurricane protection levees, as well as bigger waves and as much as 15 inches of rain.
A hurricane warning was in effect for the north-central Gulf Coast from Morgan City, La., to the Alabama-Florida line. Tornado warnings were posted for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare scenario a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl of a city that's up to 10 feet below sea level in spots and dependent 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 is 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.
Nagin said he expected the pumping system to fail during the height of the storm. The mayor said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was standing by to get the system running, but water levels must fall first.
"We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared," he said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."
Major highways in New Orleans cleared out late Sunday after more than 24 hours of jammed traffic as people headed inland. At the peak of the evacuation, 18,000 people an hour were streaming out of southeastern Louisiana, state police said.
On inland highways in Louisiana and Mississippi, heavy traffic remained the rule into the night as the last evacuees tried to reach safety. In Orange, Texas, Janie Johnson of the American Red Cross described it as a "river of headlights."
In Washington, D.C., the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said it has been advised that the Waterford nuclear plant about 20 miles west of New Orleans has been shut down as a precautionary measure.
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 early Saturday. Bands of wind-whipped rain increased Sunday night and roads in some low areas were beginning to flood.
"Hopefully it will take a turn and we'll be spared the brunt of it, but it just don't look like that," said James Bosco, who was packing up a final few items from his beachfront apartment in Gulfport. "I just hope everybody makes it all right. We can always rebuild."
Alabama officials issued mandatory evacuation orders for low-lying coastal areas. Mobile Mayor Michael C. Dow said flooding could be worse than the 9-foot surge that soaked downtown during Hurricane Georges in 1998. Residents of several barrier islands in the western Florida Panhandle were also urged to evacuate.
Katrina hit the southern tip of Florida as a much weaker storm Thursday and was blamed for nine deaths. It left miles of streets and homes flooded and knocked out power to about 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.
National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov |
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