Up to 80 people could have been killed by Hurricane Katrina in one Mississippi county alone, local authorities said on Tuesday.
Unconfirmed reports said the death toll in Harrison county has reached 80, with that number likely to rise. Earlier today, at least 55 people were reported to have been killed by the storm, with 50 of those having died in Harrison.
”The devastation down there is just enormous,” governor Haley Barbour told NBC’s Today programme. ”We know that there is a lot of the coast that we have not been able to get to. I hate to say it, but it looks like it is a very bad disaster in terms of human life.”
Jim Pollard, a spokesperson for Harrison county emergency operations centre, on Tuesday told the Associated Press that 30 people had died in a beachside apartment block in Biloxi.
Three other people were killed by falling trees in Mississippi, and two died in a traffic accident in Alabama.
Experts feared floods would devastate New Orleans, with most of the city lying below sea level. But, at the last moment, Katrina veered east and the historic city centre was damaged, but not destroyed, by flooding.
Insurers said the storm could cost up to $26-billion, making it the most expensive in United States history.
AIR Worldwide Corporation, a risk-modelling firm based in Boston, on Monday said losses could range from $12-billion to $26-billion. Hurricane Andrew caused $21-billion of damage to property in Florida and along the Gulf coast in 1992.
Mississippi was the worst-hit state, with flood waters reaching 6,6m. More than 1 600 Mississippi National Guardsmen have been called up for duty, and the Alabama Guard plans to send two battalions to the state.
Tree trunks, fallen power lines and chunks of broken concrete strewn in streets have hampered rescue efforts. Workers warned that swirling water in many areas could contain hidden dangers while, along one highway, motorists used chainsaws to remove trees blocking the road.
Katrina hit the Gulf of Mexico coast on Monday morning, with winds up to 232kph, before sweeping across Mississippi, Alabama and western Florida. It was the sixth hurricane to hit Florida in just over a year.
Large areas of New Orleans were underwater as boats and helicopters rescued residents from their rooftops. The storm shattered windows in skyscrapers, littered the streets of the French Quarter with debris and punched holes in the roof of the Superdome Arena, where 10 000 people were taking shelter.
Conditions inside the sports arena this afternoon were said to be ”miserable” after the building lost power, causing the air conditioning to fail. The carpets were reported to be soaked and the bricks slick with condensation.
”Everybody wants to go see their house. We want to know what’s happened to us. It’s hot, it’s miserable and, on top of that, you’re worried about your house,” Rosetta Junne, a 37-year-old taking refuge in the Superdome, said.
Local radio reports said many bodies had been seen floating in floodwater. Speaking about those who had ignored evacuation orders, Terry Ebbert, the chief of homeland security for New Orleans, said: ”[For] some of them, it was their last night on Earth. That’s a hard way to learn a lesson.”
Residents have been ordered to boil water before drinking it after a water main burst in the city, and police have made several arrests for looting.
Throughout the region, shattered buildings were surrounded by flooded streets and fields. Broken boats and cars were strewn about the landscape, and debris lay everywhere.
In the coastal village of St Bernard Parish, around 40 000 homes were swamped by the hurricane. In one low-lying neighbourhood on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, a levee, or embankment, along a canal gave way, forcing dozens of people to scramble on to their roofs as water rose to their gutters.
Colonel Rich Wagenaar, of the Army Corps of Engineers said a breach in the eastern part of the city was causing flooding and ”significant evacuations” in Orleans and St Bernard parishes. He did not know how many people were affected.
Witness Bryan Vernon said he had spent three hours on his roof, screaming for someone to rescue him. ”I’ve never encountered anything like it in my life,” he said. ”It just kept rising and rising and rising.”
Experts warned heavy rainfall over the Mississippi delta during the next few days could cause catastrophic flash floods.
More than one million homes in the region are without electricity, and authorities said it could take two months before supplies were restored to everyone. Ten major New Orleans hospitals were reported to be running on emergency backup power.
”This is a horror story. I’d rather be reading it somewhere else than living it,” Aaron Broussard, the president of Jefferson Parish, which includes parts of New Orleans, said.
He said residents would not be allowed back to their homes until later this week, and even then for only as long as it took to pick up essential items.
The US government began sending supplies of baby formula, communications equipment, generators, water and ice to hard-hit areas of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, along with doctors, nurses and first-aid kits. The Pentagon also sent experts to help with search and rescue operations.
Katrina has now been downgraded from a category four hurricane to a category two tropical storm, but winds remain at 104kph.
Forecasters also warned that, as it moves north over the next few days, the storm could trigger tornadoes over the south-eastern US, flooding the Tennessee and Ohio valleys with up to 20cm or more of rain. – Guardian Unlimited Â