Hundreds feared dead on storm-ravaged U.S. coast

By Matt Daily

BILOXI, Mississippi (Reuters) – Helicopters plucked frantic
survivors from rooftops of inundated homes on Tuesday and
hundreds were feared dead along the U.S. Gulf Coast after
Hurricane Katrina sent a wall of water into Mississippi and
flooded New Orleans.

The economic cost of the hurricane’s rampage could be the
highest in U.S. history, according to damage estimates.

“The devastation is greater than our worst fears,”
Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco told a news conference. “It’s
totally overwhelming.”

An overnight breach in New Orleans’ protective levee system
allowed water from Lake Pontchartrain to flood most of the
city.

In the Mississippi coastal city of Biloxi, hundreds may
have been killed after being trapped in their homes when a
30-foot (9 meter) storm surge came ashore, a city spokesman
said. Cadaver dogs were being brought in to help find the dead.

“It’s going to be in the hundreds,” spokesman Vincent Creel
told Reuters.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reported bodies floating in the
city’s floodwaters.

Rescuers struggled through high water and mountains of
debris to reach areas devastated by Katrina when it struck the
Gulf Coast region on Monday. The storm inflicted catastrophic
damage all along the coast as it slammed into Louisiana with
140 mph (224 kph) winds, then swept across Mississippi, Alabama
and Tennessee.

It shattered buildings, broke boats, smashed cars, toppled
trees and submerged whole neighborhoods. Risk analysts
estimated the storm would cost insurers $26 billion, making
Katrina potentially the costliest U.S. natural disaster.

Most of the deaths appear to have been caused by the storm
surge, which swept as far as a mile inland in parts of
Mississippi.

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.

PLUCKED TO SAFETY

Police took boats into flood-stricken areas to rescue some
of the stranded and others were plucked off rooftops by
helicopter. The Coast Guard helped rescue 1,200 in New Orleans
on Monday night and thousands more all along the Gulf Coast on
Tuesday.

“We’ve been pulling them off sometimes four at a time,
sometimes as many as 12,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer Larry
Chambers. “People are being taken to the nearest dry spot then
the helicopter’s going back and picking up more people.”

In New Orleans, “We probably have 80 percent of our city
under water; with some sections of our city the water is as
deep as 20 feet,” Nagin told television station WWL. “Both
airports are under water.”

New Orleans is a bowl-like city mostly below sea level and
protected by levees or embankments. The levees gave way
overnight in places, including a 200-foot (60 meter) breach
that allowed the lake waters to pour into the city center.

The U.S. military planned to use helicopters to drop giant
sandbags filled with gravel into the breach in an attempt to
fill it.

Pumps failed and floodwaters threatened downtown and the
historic French Quarter.

“This is a horror story. I’d rather be reading it somewhere
else than living it,” said Aaron Broussard, president of New
Orleans’ Jefferson Parish.

MARK OF DEATH

In Mississippi, water swamped the emergency operations
center at Hancock County courthouse. The back of the building
collapsed and “Thirty-five people swam out of their emergency
operations center with life jackets on,” Mississippi’s Sun
Herald newspaper said.

The local hospital appealed for more doctors and nurses to
treat the wounded. 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
but did not have enough refrigerated trucks.

In Biloxi, the storm surge destroyed some of the casinos
that lined the shore and ripped houses off their foundations.
Dazed residents foraged for food and water and looting was
widespread, the city spokesman said.

“It was like our tsunami,” Creel said.

Fires were allowed to burn themselves out because
firefighters had only the small amount of water they carried on
their trucks.

Before striking the Gulf Coast, Katrina last week hit
southern Florida and killed seven people.

Katrina 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 had swept through oil and gas fields in the Gulf
of Mexico, where 20 percent of the nation’s energy is produced.
At least two drilling rigs were knocked adrift and one in
Mobile Bay, Alabama, broke free of its mooring and slammed into
a bridge.

U.S. oil prices on Tuesday jumped $3.65 a barrel to peak at
$70.85 as oil firms assessed damage.

Governors in the stricken states called out more than 7,500
National Guard troops to help police control looting, remove
debris and deliver aid.

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.

The remnants of the storm spun off tornadoes in Georgia and
drenched Tennessee and Kentucky. In western Kentucky, heavy
rain turn the normally placid North and South Forks of the
Little River into torrents and rescuers used boats to retrieve
people stranded in a flooded neighborhood. A 10-year-old girl
was sucked into a drainage pipe and killed.