DEVASTATION

Davie, Fla., August 27, 2005 -- Winds from Hurricane Katrina knocked over this tree crushing this mobile home. The residents had evacuated. Many mobile homes homes are damaged and residents are displaced. Marvin Nauman/FEMA photo


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.

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."

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.

Read more.

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) -- The historic city of New Orleans was steadily filling with water from nearby Lake Ponchartrain on Tuesday after its defenses were breached by the ferocity of hurricane Katrina.

With the floodwaters rising in many areas, threatening the French Quarter, residents were plucked from the roofs of their homes, bodies were seen floating in the streets and rescuers searched the city in boats and helicopters.

"We probably have 80 percent of our city under water; with some sections of our city the water is as deep as 20 feet. Both airports are underwater," Mayor Ray Nagin told a radio interviewer.

New Orleans, a city that usually throbs with the life of its carnivals and the sound of jazz and blues, was in a "state of devastation," Nagin said.

...Weather experts had predicted the city would be quickly overwhelmed by the impact of Katrina, which tore across the coast on Monday but initially damage appeared less than catastrophic.

By Tuesday, however, the full impact was clear as the water rose and overwhelmed pumps, part of an elaborate system of walls, canals and other devices built to protect the city from just such a disaster.

Fears grew about pollution, with the water believed to be carrying sewage, spilled fuel and other pollutants from residential and commercial districts inundated in the flood.

...No deaths were officially confirmed, but Nagin said bodies were seen floating.

Read more.

Thank God Katrina didn't hit land as a Category 5 hurricane. It's difficult to look at the devastation as it is and imagine the destruction being any worse.

"We have nowhere to go," one broken man whose wife and house were swept away by floodwaters in Gulfport, Miss., told FOX News. "I lost everything. That's all I had. That's all I had."

For some, like this man, it got as bad as it could get.

Here is an extremely disturbing report.
BILOXI, Mississippi (Reuters) -- Hundreds may have been killed by Hurricane Katrina in the Mississippi Gulf Coast city of Biloxi after being trapped in their homes when a 30-foot (9 meter) storm surge came ashore, a spokesman for the city said on Tuesday.

"It's going to be in the hundreds," Vincent Creel told Reuters. "Camille was 200, and we're looking at a lot more than that," he said, referring to Hurricane Camille, which hit the area in 1969 and destroyed swaths of Mississippi and Louisiana.

There is so much misery.

I hope we can put our differences aside and pull together as a country to provide relief and assistance.

The President plans to shorten his "vacation" to deal with the catastrophe.

Does this mean Cindy Sheehan will have to scramble to change her plans as well?

Do you think Jimmy Carter is strapping on his tool belt and getting ready to help the victims rebuild? Or, is he too busy lecturing Americans about not giving a damn about those in need?



WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush decided to cancel the rest of his vacation to concentrate on federal relief efforts for victims of Hurricane Katrina as his top disaster relief official lamented "catastrophic" damage in three Southern states.

With at least one New Orleans hospital threatened by Katrina's floodwaters, Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said that patients were being transferred to the Superdome and medical personnel were being sent in to treat them.

Meanwhile, the White House revealed that Bush was returning to Washington Wednesday from his Texas ranch. "We have a lot of work to do," the president said of the storm damage in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. He initially was to have flown back to the capital on Friday.

Bush planned to chair a meeting Wednesday of a White House task force set up to coordinate the federal response and relief effort, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

The damage is "very, very sobering," Brown said. "And of course the flooding is just everywhere ... New Orleans, all through Mississippi and Alabama. This storm is really having a catastrophic effect." Low- lying areas are "just devastated," he said.

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