Army
engineers raced to staunch rising floodwaters submerging historic
New Orleans as helicopters plucked frantic survivors from rooftops
and hundreds were feared dead after Hurricane Katrina tore across
the US Gulf Coast.
Authorities made plans to remove thousands of storm refugees from
the Superdome stadium and other shelters in New Orleans and forged
a bold scheme to airdrop giant sandbags to plug breaches in the
city's protective levee system as water from Lake Pontchartrain
poured into the city.
Looters struck, adding to the city's misery. They waded through flood water to ransack electronics stores, drugstores and supermarkets. They rolled carts full of merchandise and carried bundles and boxes of beer from downtown stores.
The
economic cost of the hurricane could be the highest in US history,
as much as $26 billion, according to risk analysts'
estimates.
"It looks like we've been nuked," said Hayes Bolton, 65, as he
guarded the rubble of his pawn shop in Biloxi, Mississippi, near
where the homes of his grandmother, mother and aunt were destroyed
by the storm.
"This is just a tragedy. It makes you want to crawl in a hole."
As New Orleans coped with a flood, Mississippi grappled with the prospect that hundreds of people may have died when a 9 metre storm surge blasted ashore, a city spokesman said. Cadaver dogs were being brought in to help find the dead.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said there were reports of up to 80 dead in the Biloxi area, but US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the state's unofficial estimates were "probably way too low."
Biloxi spokesman Vincent Creel told Reuters "It's going to be in the hundreds."
Rescuers struggled through high water and mountains of debris to reach areas crushed by Katrina when it struck the Gulf Coast on Monday. The storm inflicted catastrophic damage as it slammed into Louisiana with 224 kph winds, then raged into Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.
Plucked to safety
Across the region, hundreds of people climbed onto rooftops to escape the rising water that lapped at the eaves. They used axes, and in at least one case a shotgun, to blast holes in roofs so they could escape through the attics.
Police took boats into flooded areas to rescue some of the stranded and others were lifted off rooftops by helicopter. The Coast Guard helped rescue 1,200 in New Orleans and thousands more all along the Gulf Coast.
Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco urged residents to hold a day of prayer on Wednesday to "calm our spirits" and give thanks for survival. "The situation is untenable," she said. "It's just heartbreaking."
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reported bodies floating in the floodwaters, which may have measured 6 metres deep in places.
Officials
said a 9-metre shark had been spotted cruising the flooded
streets.
"What I saw today is equivalent to what I saw flying over the
tsunami in Indonesia. There are places that are no longer there,"
said Senetor Mary Landrieu of Louisiana after flying over the
damaged area.
New Orleans is a bowl-like city mostly below sea level and
protected by levees or embankments. The levees gave way overnight
in at least three places, including a 60 metre breach that allowed
the lake waters to pour into the city centre.
The US
military planned to use helicopters to drop 1,360-kg, gravel-filled
sandbags into the breaches, the worst up to 6 metre deep.
Authorities were also considering plugging the gap with shipping
containers filled with sand.
Blanco said a plan was being developed to evacuate the Superdome,
which had no electricity, and other shelters.
Governors in the stricken states called out more than 7,500 National Guard troops to help control looting, remove debris and deliver aid.
ABC News
said the looters in New Orleans numbered in the thousands and
carted away anything that was unguarded while a few overwhelmed
police officers stood idly by.
In another area, a special weapons team showed up with machine guns
prominently displayed in a show of force.
"This ain't no time for this kind of foolishness but people trapped, a lot of them hungry, they don't have no water, need medicine. I need insulin right now," a woman told ABC.
Four people were confirmed dead in St. Tammany Parish, east of New Orleans, a local official said.
Most of
the deaths appear to have been caused by the storm surge, which
swept as far as a 1.5 km inland in parts of Mississippi.
"From the destruction I've seen, I think there'll be some people we
never find," Biloxi Mayor AJ Holloway said after a helicopter
tour.
Biloxi Fire Captain Michael Thomas said an entire apartment complex collapsed and officials believed there are many bodies in the building.
At a
nearby cemetery, coffins drifted out of mausoleums. "Caskets are
everywhere," he said.
Katrina dragged a casino as big as a football field 91.44 metres
over a seafront street and set it down in a parking lot.
In
Mississippi's Hancock County, emergency workers went from house to
house and put black paint on those where people died, CNN said.
They planned to return later to pick up the bodies.
Path of destruction
Before striking the Gulf Coast, Katrina last week hit southern
Florida and killed seven people.
It knocked out electricity to about 2.3 million customers, or nearly 5 million people, in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, utility companies said. Restoring power could take weeks, they warned.
The storm
swept through oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico, source of
20 percent to 25 percent of US production of the commodities US oil
prices jumped $3.65 a barrel to peak at $70.85 as oil firms
assessed damage.
Convoys of Humvees and military trucks streamed south on Interstate
65 through Alabama with loads of fuel and power generators.
Special Forces boat crews were dispatched to conduct search and rescue operations in flooded communities.
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