Hurricane Katrina claimed its first victims in Louisiana early on Monday as it dumped torrential rain on the southern state and other parts of the United States Gulf of Mexico coast, threatening death and massive destruction.
Although slightly weaker, the monster storm forced tens of thousands of New Orleans residents to flee the low-lying city and seek refuge on higher ground.
But for three elderly people the evacuation from New Orleans to Baton Rouge proved fatal, officials acknowledged.
State police spokesperson Markus Smith said the people were ”indirect” victims of the storm, which has been downgraded to category four but is still packing a powerful punch.
”It may have been dehydration related,” Smith said in a telephone interview.
He explained that Louisiana state police view natural-disaster casualties as direct when they are killed by falling trees and downed power lines or die as a result of flooding or storm surges.
The National Hurricane Centre downgraded Katrina to a category-four storm after it measured sustained winds reaching 250kph, a notch weaker than necessary to qualify for category-five status.
But forecasters warned the change could be fleeting as patches of warmer-than-usual water in the Gulf of Mexico could lend the storm additional strength in coming hours.
”Katrina is expected to make landfall as either a category-four or possible a category-five hurricane,” the centre said.
Records going back to 1851 show that only three category-five hurricanes have hit the United States in more than 150 years.
At 7am GMT, the eye of the hurricane was located 113km south of the mouth of the Mississippi River and about 209km from New Orleans.
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, who issued an unprecedented mandatory evacuation order for the city known as ”The Big Easy”, warned people to remain vigilant.
”I do not want to create panic,” he said. ”But I do want the citizens to understand that this is very serious and it’s of the highest nature.”
”We need to pray, of course, very strongly, that the hurricane force would diminish,” said Louisiana state Governor Kathleen Blanco.
US President George Bush declared a state of emergency that clears the way for federal aid, and urged people to get out of the hurricane’s path.
”We cannot stress enough the dangers this hurricane poses to Gulf Coast communities. I ask citizens to put their safety and the safety of their families first by moving to safe ground,” Bush said from his Texas ranch.
At the city’s Louis Armstrong airport, people anxiously awaited outbound flights.
”I’m just happy to be getting out of here,” said Tracy Roberson, a 31-year-old postal worker who sat at the airport with her cat. ”I think there’s going to be casualties because they didn’t give enough notice.”
About 30 000 people took refuge in the Superdome sports arena, which authorities designated a shelter of last resort for those unable to flee the city.
Authorities also ordered evacuations in neighbouring Mississippi, which also expected to be slammed by the monster storm.
Since Katrina raged dangerously close to offshore oil platforms, most of which have been evacuated, oil prices hit new record highs after crossing $70 a barrel in Asia Monday and were expected to go higher.
The deadly storm wrought havoc in Miami and other areas of south Florida last week, killing seven people, uprooting trees and flooding entire neighbourhoods.
About half a million people still had no electricity on Sunday.
Katrina is the 11th named Atlantic storm this year and among the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record.
Of three category-five storms noted in history, Hurricane Andrew killed more than two dozen people when it slammed into south Florida in 1992, while Camille caused more than 250 deaths in Mississippi in 1969, and the ”Labour Day” hurricane killed about 600 people in the Florida Keys in 1935. — AFP
