Fear ripped through the largest emergency shelter in New Orleans on Monday as rain from Hurricane Katrina seeped through the roof of the Superdome sports arena.
”The Superdome management assured us this would be the safest place in New Orleans,” a clearly shaken reporter told a local radio station as the eye of the category-four hurricane approached the low-lying city.
”This is starting to get nervous,” the reporter said as people climbed up into the stands of the sports arena to escape the water accumulating at ground level. ”There’s a lot of strange sounds. That waterproofing that was [on the roof] may be in the process of being peeled off. There is no open sky, but there is water seeping into the Superdome.”
Tens of thousands of local residents who were unable or unwilling to heed a mandatory evacuation order lined up on Sunday morning to get into what the city called a refuge of last resort.
But it was lights out in the French Quarter early on Monday, where visibility was virtually nil as rain shot across the sky in sheets. Winds were so powerful that, in the Best Western hotel on historic Saint Charles Street, some of the beds shook as the gusts whipped by.
At 11am GMT, the eye of the storm was located about 112km south-southeast of New Orleans as the storm barrelled northward at about 25kph.
With less than an hour to go before the eye of the storm hit, flooding had not yet set in the French Quarter, but it was a growing concern, as the city’s water pumps shut down.
Hospitals in the area, meanwhile, were preparing evacuation plans to get patients and personnel off lower floors.
Although slightly weaker than on Sunday, the monster storm has already forced hundreds of thousands of area residents, from New Orleans to Biloxi, Mississippi, to flee and seek refuge on higher ground.
An estimated 80% of New Orleans residents have left the low-lying, flood-prone city, according to local officials.
Dwayne Carey (28) was one of the thousands who took refuge in area hotels. He said he decided to stay because the last time he tried to evacuate before a storm, it took him four hours to drive 48km.
”It’s my first time sitting through a storm. Let’s see what it can do,” he said as he watched sheets of horizontal rain fly up the street from the lobby of the Best Western hotel.
A handful of hotel residents were hanging around the lobby and bar. One was drinking a beer at the bar, while another was watching a movie on a portable DVD player. Two others were trying to videotape the storm through an open doorway as several of the area’s massive decorative lamppost coverings rolled down the water-soaked street.
The hotel’s general manager came through the lobby asking people to head back to their rooms as the winds picked up.
”Folks, it’s really a lot safer upstairs,” said Melisa Kennedy (31).
Kennedy had been monitoring the storm all night, making sure the emergency generators kicked in and watching for flying debris. She said she saw water fill the streets several times. The water had lapped up against the sandbags guarding the front door three or four times by the early morning, but it receded each time, as the city’s water pumps — which were still operating at the time — kicked in.
But within an hour, the water had risen again and began seeping in under the sandbags and into the hotel bar.
”It’s not gotten as bad as it’s going to. It’s going to worse,” Kennedy said. ”We’re expecting the lobby to get flooded.”
People in the lobby, meanwhile, were busy chatting about the man who boldly decided to drive off in his sports utility vehicle in the midst of the storm.
Upstairs, on the second floor, a handful of children were gathered in the hallway.
Kendra Williams (17) insisted she wasn’t scared.
”We were looking for a bathroom because the one in our room, you can’t see in,” she said.
A neighbourly man down the hall gave the children a glow stick, which are popular in New Orleans’s famed bars, so they could see in the dark bathroom. — AFP
