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One
Mississippi county alone said its death toll was at
least 100, and officials are "very, very worried
that this is going to go a lot higher," said Joe
Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County,
home to Biloxi and Gulfport. In neighboring Jackson
County, officials said at least 10 deaths were blamed
on the storm.
Several
victims in Harrison County were from a beachfront apartment
building that collapsed under a 25-foot wall of water
as Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast with 145-mph winds.
And Louisiana officials said many were feared dead there,
too, making Katrina one of the most punishing storms
to hit the United States in decades.
After
touring the destruction by air, Mississippi Gov. Haley
Barbour said it is not of case of homes being severely
damaged, "they're simply not there. ... I can only
imagine that this is what Hiroshima looked like 60 years
ago."
New
Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said hundreds, if not thousands,
of people may still be stuck on roofs and in attics,
and so rescue boats were bypassing the dead.
"We're
not even dealing with dead bodies," Nagin said.
"They're just pushing them on the side."
The
flooding in New Orleans grew worse by the minute, prompting
the evacuation of hotels and hospitals and an audacious
plan to drop huge sandbags from helicopters to close
up one of the breached levees. At the same time, looting
broke out in some neighborhoods, the sweltering city
of 480,000 had no drinkable water, and the electricity
could be out for weeks.
With
water rising perilously inside the Superdome, Blanco
said the thousands of refugees now huddled there would
be evacuated within two days. She said officials are
working on a plan to get the people to other shelters.
The
dome, which became a shelter of last resort for some
20,000 people, is currently without electricity and
has no air conditioning. Broken toilets have also made
for extremely unsanitary conditions, Blanco said.
"Conditions
are degenerating rapidly," she said. "It's
a very, very desperate situation."
She
asked residents to spend Wednesday in prayer.
"That
would be the best thing to calm our spirits and thank
our Lord that we are survivors," she said. "Slowly,
gradually, we will recover; we will survive; we will
rebuild."
A
helicopter view of the devastation over the New Orleans
area revealed people standing on black rooftops baking
in the sunshine while waiting for rescue boats. A row
of desperately needed ambulances were lined up on the
interstate, water blocking their path. Roller coasters
jutted out from the water at a Six Flags amusement park.
Hundreds of inmates were seen standing on a highway
because the prison had been flooded.
Sen.
Mary Landrieu quietly traced the sign of the cross across
her head and chest as she looked out at St. Bernard
Parish, where only roofs peeked out from the water.
"The
whole parish is gone," Landrieu said.
All
day long, rescuers in boats and helicopters pulled out
shellshocked and bedraggled flood refugees from rooftops
and attics. Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said that 3,000
people have been rescued by boat and air, some placed
shivering and wet into helicopter baskets. They were
brought by the truckload into shelters, some in wheelchairs
and some carrying babies, with stories of survival and
of those who didn't make it.
"Oh
my God, it was hell," said Kioka Williams, who
had to hack through the ceiling of the beauty shop where
she worked as floodwaters rose in New Orleans' low-lying
Ninth Ward. "We were screaming, hollering, flashing
lights. It was complete chaos."
Frank
Mills was in a boarding house in the same neighborhood
when water started swirling up toward the ceiling and
he fled to the roof. Two elderly residents never made
it out, and a third was washed away trying to climb
onto the roof.
"He
was kind of on the edge of the roof, catching his breath,"
Mills said. "Next thing I knew, he came floating
past me."
Across
Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, more than 1 million
residents remained without electricity, some without
clean drinking water. An untold number who heeded evacuation
orders were displaced and 40,000 were in Red Cross shelters,
with officials saying it could be weeks, if not months,
before most will be able to return.
Emergency
medical teams from across the country were sent into
the region and President Bush cut short his Texas vacation
Tuesday to return to Washington to focus on the storm
damage.
Federal
Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown warned
that structural damage to homes, diseases from animal
carcasses and chemicals in floodwaters made it unsafe
for residents to come home anytime soon. And a mass
return also was discouraged to keep from interfering
with rescue and recovery efforts.
That
was made tough enough by the vast expanse of floodwaters
in coastal areas that took an eight-hour pounding from
Katrina's howling winds and up to 15 inches of rainfall.
From the air, neighborhood after neighborhood looked
like nothing but islands of rooftops surrounded by swirling,
tea-colored water.
In
New Orleans, the flooding actually got worse Tuesday.
Failed pumps and levees apparently spilled water from
Lake Pontchartrain into streets. The rising water forced
hotels to evacuate, led a hospital to boatlift patients
to emergency shelters, and drove the staff of New Orleans'
Times-Picayune newspaper out of its offices.
Officials
late Tuesday began the process of using helicopters
to drop 3,000-pound sandbags and dozens of giant concrete
barriers into the breach, and expressed confidence the
problem could be solved. But if the water rose a couple
feet higher, it could wipe out water system for whole
city, said New Orleans' homeland security chief Terry
Ebbert.
A
clearer picture of the destruction in Alabama became
to emerge Tuesday: cement slabs where homes once stood,
a 100-foot shrimp boat smoldering on its side, people
searching for swept-away keepsakes. The damage in some
areas appears to be worse than last year's Hurricane
Ivan.
In
devastated Biloxi, Miss., areas that were not underwater
were littered with tree trunks, downed power lines and
chunks of broken concrete. Some buildings were flattened.
The
string of floating barge casinos crucial to the coastal
economy were a shambles. At least three of them were
picked up by the storm surge and carried inland, their
barnacle-covered hulls sitting up to 200 yards inland.
One
of the deadliest spots appeared to be Biloxi's Quiet
Water Beach apartments, where authorities estimated
30 people were washed away, although the exact toll
was unknown. All that was left of the red-brick building
was a concrete slab.
"We
grabbed a lady and pulled her out the window and then
we swam with the current," 55-year-old Joy Schovest
said through tears. "It was terrifying. You should
have seen the cars floating around us. We had to push
them away when we were trying to swim."
Said
Biloxi Mayor A. J. Holloway: "This is our tsunami."
Looting
became a problem in both Biloxi and in New Orleans,
in some cases in full view of police and National Guardsmen.
One police officer was shot in the head by a looter
in New Orleans, but was expected to recover, Sgt. Paul
Accardo, a police spokesman.
On
New Orleans' Canal Street, which actually resembled
a canal, dozens of looters ripped open the steel gates
on clothing and jewelry stores, some packing plastic
garbage cans with loot to float down the street. One
man, who had about 10 pairs of jeans draped over his
left arm, was asked if he was salvaging things from
his store.
"No,"
the man shouted, "that's EVERYBODY'S store!"
Looters
at a Wal-Mart brazenly loaded up shopping carts with
items including microwaves, coolers and knife sets.
Others walked out of a sporting goods store on Canal
Street with armfuls of shoes and football jerseys.
Outside
the broken shells of Biloxi's casinos, people picked
through slot machines to see if they still contained
coins and ransacked other businesses.
"People
are just casually walking in and filling up garbage
bags and walking off like they're Santa Claus,"
said Marty Desei, owner of a Super 8 motel.
Insurance
experts estimated the storm will result in up to $25
billion in insured losses. That means Katrina could
prove more costly than record-setting Hurricane Andrew
in 1992, which caused an inflation-adjusted $21 billion
in losses.
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, with the
potential to dump 8 inches of rain and spin off deadly
tornadoes.
Katrina
left 11 people dead in its soggy jog across South Florida
last week, as a much weaker storm.
Associated
Press reporters Holbrook Mohr, Mary Foster, Allen G.
Breed, Brett Martel, Adam Nossiter and Jay Reeves contributed
to this report.
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