Hurricane Katrina smashed into the United States Gulf Coast near New Orleans on Monday, trapping hundreds of people in their flooded homes and leaving a trail of devastation across the southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
The hurricane killed at least 54 people in Mississippi, a local newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The Clarion-Ledger, based in Jackson, Mississippi, quoted Jim Pollard, a spokesperson for Harrison county emergency services, as saying that 30 deaths occurred in a single apartment complex in the Gulf coast city of Biloxi, where tenants were drowned or crushed by debris.
The newspaper said falling trees accounted for some of the other two dozen deaths across the state.
The Clarion-Ledger also quoted Joe Spraggins, director of the Harrison County Emergency Management Agency, as saying the authorities expected to find more bodies on Tuesday.
The massive storm is one of the most powerful ever to hit the US. Damage is estimated to be in the billions of dollars in towns and cities along the Gulf Coast.
The hurricane, which could be among the most costly in US history, virtually shut down crude production in the Gulf of Mexico, at one point sending oil prices surging to record highs.
Entire neighbourhoods were under water in eastern New Orleans and rescuers were desperately working after dark to save hundreds of people trapped in their homes.
”We’ve got a massive search-and-rescue situation going on,” Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said about 12 hours after Hurricane Katrina slammed into this southern US city of 1,4-million people.
”We’ve pulled literally hundreds of people out of the waters,” she said. ”We believe there are hundreds more out there.
”We’ve got boats moving through neighbourhoods,” she added. ”We’ve got hundreds and hundreds of houses inundated with water in eastern New Orleans.
”We believe we’ve lost some lives. We’re hearing isolated reports here and there.”
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin — who ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city on Sunday — told WWLTV that several bodies had been seen ”floating in the water”.
On Sunday, three elderly people died, apparently from dehydration, as they were being evacuated from a nursing home in New Orleans. Katrina was blamed for another seven deaths when it battered Florida last week.
Coast Guard helicopters plucked survivors from rooftops and firefighters went house-to-house in boats in desperate rescue operations in eastern New Orleans.
With water lapping as high as the eaves on some houses, rescue crews piled into any boat they could find with a working motor and searched for people trapped in wooden homes on New Orleans’s east side.
James Johnson (47) said he had spent 12 hours trapped in his attic with nothing but a hammer and a screwdriver.
As the rising water filled his home, he pounded away at the insulation-lined roof trying to escape.
”I feel a lot better now,” he said after being brought to safety by firefighters in an aluminium skiff.
Packing winds of 240kph, the storm made landfall over Louisiana early on Monday, and gradually lost strength after it hit the mainland east of New Orleans. It was downgraded to a tropical storm late on Monday.
While the flood-prone city took a severe pounding, it was spared the even more punishing direct hit many had feared.
But Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said it crashed through his state ”like a ton of bricks”, and expressed fears the death toll could rise as rescue teams reach areas cut off by floodwaters.
”We expect that catastrophic damage has been suffered on the coast,” he said at a news conference in Jackson, Mississippi.
Curfews were imposed in Mississippi and police in Louisiana were told to keep all but non-emergency personnel out of affected areas.
There were isolated reports of looting.
Officials urged the hundreds of thousands of people who fled ahead of the storm not to return home.
”The power is out, the phones are down and there is no food or water, and many trees are down,” said Blanco.
More than a million people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama lost electricity.
Residents and tourists who stayed behind in New Orleans’s famed French Quarter on Monday found a neighbourhood ravaged like a war zone.
Historic houses with their trademark ironwork balconies appeared to have suffered structural damage.
Police stepped up patrols in order to prevent looting of deserted bars and shops in the neighbourhood famed for its annual Mardi Gras revelry.
At the massive Superdome stadium that sheltered 10 000 people, winds tore off parts of the roof and water poured into the building.
Nagin said at least 20 buildings in the city collapsed and it might be 48 hours before residents will be allowed back to their homes to assess the devastation.
In Mobile, Alabama, an oil rig tore free of its moorings before surging downriver and smashing into a suspension bridge, witnesses said.
The storm lost a little of its monstrous power overnight, but still slammed ashore at category four, the second-highest level on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane-intensity scale.
US President George Bush offered federal disaster aid to the affected states and said: ”America will pray, pray for the health and safety of all our citizens.”
Oil markets also kept a close watch on the hurricane, which shut down 92% of US crude output in the Gulf of Mexico.
Oil prices had rocketed over a new high of $70 a barrel, but prices later dropped to $67,20 in New York after the US government said it could release strategic crude reserves.
The storm’s insurance damages could be among the most severe in US history, according to Robert Hartwig, chief economist for the Insurance Information Institute.
”There are estimates out there ranging from $12-billion to $25-billion,” he said. — AFP
