| Hurricane Katrina has devastated millions of lives
and caused billions of dollars in property damage. It
will take months and even years to replace all the homes
and business damaged by the hurricane winds of Katrina.
The victims of these hurricane devastated areas of louisiana,
Mississippi and Alabama need your help. This is the
worst disaster caused by a hurricane ever recorded in
united states history.
Charities need your help to ease the pain of this massive
destruction. Charitable organization nationwide will
ask for your help.
BATON ROUGE – Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco
is urging Louisiana citizens who are housed in shelters
to stay at their locations until weather and road conditions
can be evaluated.
Evacuees will NOT be allowed to return to some portions
of southeast Louisiana, including Orleans, Jefferson,
Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes, due to extremely
dangerous conditions. Officials warn that until emergency
officials are able to evaluate these areas, citizens
are in danger of injuring themselves and others. State
police will not allow vehicles to travel any roadways
into New Orleans and points south.
Shelters are the safest locations during this catastrophic
time. Many citizens could return to their homes only
to find that their homes destroyed.
August 29, 2005 - Courtesy of Associated Press
- By ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press Writer
Announcing itself with shrieking, 145-mph winds, Hurricane
Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast just outside New
Orleans on Monday, submerging entire neighborhoods up
to their roofs, swamping Mississippi's beachfront casinos
and blowing out windows in hospitals, hotels and high-rises.
For New Orleans — a dangerously vulnerable city
because it sits mostly below sea level in a bowl-shaped
depression — it was not the apocalyptic storm
forecasters had feared.
But it was plenty bad, in New Orleans and elsewhere
along the coast, where scores people had to be rescued
from rooftops and attics as the floodwaters rose around
them.
At least five deaths were blamed on Katrina —
three people killed by falling trees in Mississippi
and two killed in a traffic accident in Alabama. And
an untold number of other people were feared dead in
flooded neighborhoods, many of which could not be reached
by rescuers because of high water.
"Some of them, it was their last night on Earth,"
Terry Ebbert, chief of homeland security for New Orleans,
said of people who ignored orders to evacuate the city
of 480,000 over the weekend. "That's a hard way
to learn a lesson."
"We pray that the loss of life is very limited,
but we fear that is not the case," Louisiana Gov.
Kathleen Blanco said.
Katrina knocked out power to more than three-quarters
of a million people from Louisiana to the Florida's
Panhandle, and authorities said it could be two months
before electricity is restored to everyone. Ten major
hospitals in New Orleans were running on emergency backup
power.
The federal government began rushing baby formula,
communications equipment, generators, water and ice
into hard-hit areas, along with doctors, nurses and
first-aid supplies. The Pentagon sent experts to help
with search-and-rescue operations.
As of Monday evening, Katrina was passing through southeast
Mississippi, moving north at 18 mph. It had weakened
into a mere Category 1 hurricane with winds near 75
mph.
But it was far from done: Forecasters said that as
the storm moves north through the nation's midsection
over the next few days, it may spawn tornadoes over
the Southeast and swamp the Gulf Coast and the Tennessee
and Ohio Valleys with a potentially ruinous 8 inches
or more of rain.
Oil refiners said damage to their equipment in the
Gulf region appeared to be minimal, and oil prices dropped
back from the day's highs above $70 a barrel. But the
refiners were still assessing the damage, and the Bush
administration said it would consider releasing oil
from the nation's emergency stockpile if necessary.
Katrina had menaced the Gulf Coast over the weekend
as a 175-mph, Category 5 monster, the most powerful
ranking on the scale. But it weakened to a Category
4 and made a slight right-hand turn just become it came
ashore around daybreak near the Louisiana bayou town
of Buras, passing just east of New Orleans on a path
that spared the Big Easy — and its fabled French
Quarter — from its full fury.
In nearby coastal St. Bernard Parish, Katrina's storm
surge swamped an estimated 40,000 homes. In a particularly
low-lying neighborhood on the south shore of Lake Ponchartain,
a levee along a canal gave way and forced dozens of
residents to flee or scramble to the roofs when water
rose to their gutters.
"I've never encountered anything like it in my
life. It just kept rising and rising and rising,"
said Bryan Vernon, who spent three hours on his roof,
screaming over howling winds for someone to save him
and his fiancee.
Across a street that had turned into a river bobbing
with garbage cans, trash and old tires, a woman leaned
from the second-story window of a brick home and pleaded
to be rescued.
"There are three kids in here," the woman
said. "Can you help us?"
Blanco said 200 people have been rescued in boats from
rooftops, attics and other locations around the New
Orleans area, a scene playing out in Mississippi as
well. In some cases, rescuers are sawing through roofs
to get to people in attics, and other stranded residents
"are swimming to our boats," the governor
said.
Elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, Mississippi was subjected
to both Katrina's harshest winds and highest recorded
storm surges — 22 feet. The storm pushed water
up to the second floor of homes, flooded floating casinos,
uprooted hundreds of trees and flung sailboats across
a highway.
"Let me tell you something, folks: I've been out
there. It's complete devastation," said Gulfport,
Miss., Fire Chief Pat Sullivan.
In Gulfport, young children clung to one another in
a small blue boat as neighbors shuffled children and
elderly residents out of a flooded neighborhood.
"Everything is flooded. Roofs are off and everything,"
said Shun Howell, 25, who was trying to leave with her
5-year-old son. "Everything is ruined."
In some cases, debris was stacked 4 to 5 feet, covering
cars. Houses were washed from their foundations.
In Alabama, Katrina's arrival was marked by the flash
and crackle of exploding transformers. The hurricane
toppled huge oak branches on Mobile's waterfront and
broke apart an oil-drilling platform, sending a piece
slamming into a major bridge.
Muddy six-foot waves crashed into the eastern shore
of Mobile Bay, flooding stately, antebellum mansions
and littering them with oak branches.
"There are lots of homes through here worth a
million dollars. At least they were yesterday,"
said a shirtless Fred Wright. "I've been here 25
years, and this is the worst I've ever seen the water."
It was Katrina's second blow: The hurricane hit the
southern tip of Florida as a much weaker storm Thursday
and was blamed for 11 deaths. It was the sixth hurricane
to hit Florida in just over a year.
Calling it a once-in-a-lifetime storm, New Orleans
Mayor Ray Nagin had issued a mandatory evacuation order
as Katrina drew near. But the doomsday vision of hurricane
waters spilling over levees and swamping the city in
a toxic soup of refinery chemicals, sewage and human
bodies never materialized.
Forecasters said New Orleans — which has not
been hit directly by a major storm since Category 3
Hurricane Betsy struck in 1965 — got lucky again.
"The real important issue here is that when it
got to the metropolitan area, it was weaker," said
National Hurricane Center deputy director Ed Rappaport,
who estimated the highest winds in New Orleans were
100 mph.
A 50-foot water main broke in New Orleans, making it
unsafe to drink the city's water without first boiling
it. And police made several arrests for looting.
At New Orleans' Superdome, home to 9,000 storm refugees,
the wind ripped pieces of metal from the roof, leaving
two holes that let water drip in. A power outage also
knocked out the air conditioning, and the storm refugees
sweltered in the heat.
Katrina also shattered scores of windows in high-rise
office buildings and on five floors of the Charity Hospital,
forcing patients to be moved to lower levels. White
curtains that had been sucked out of the shattered windows
of a hotel became tangled in treetops.
In the French Quarter, made up of Napoleonic-era buildings
with wrought-iron balconies, the damage was relatively
light.
On Jackson Square, two massive oak trees outside the
278-year-old St. Louis Cathedral came out by the roots,
ripping out a 30-foot section of ornamental iron fence
and straddling a marble statue of Jesus Christ, snapping
off the thumb and forefinger of his outstretched hand.
At the hotel Le Richelieu, the winds blew open sets
of balcony French doors shortly after dawn. Seventy-three-year-old
Josephine Elow pressed her weight against the broken
doors as a hotel employee tried to secure them.
"It's not life-threatening," she said as
rainwater dripped from her face. "God's got our
back."
August 29, 2005 - Courtesy of Reuters - By Rick
Wilking
Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Louisiana coast on
Monday with 140 mile per hour (224 kph) winds as the
powerful storm came ashore from the Gulf of Mexico and
took aim at low-lying New Orleans.
The coast, much of it lightly populated swamps, was
being pounded with high winds and heavy rains while
New Orleans, 55 miles northeast, braced for the worst
of Katrina.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said the storm,
now Category 4 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale,
was not quite the monster it had been in the open Gulf,
but still packed a powerful punch. It had been a Category
5 with 175 mile per hour (280 kph) winds.
In New Orleans, wind gusts had already topped 85 miles
per hour (135 kph), well above hurricane force, and
the powerful center of the storm was still two to three
hours away, the center said.
Even into early Monday, Louisiana highways were thick
with traffic as residents sought safety as far away
as Texas, 265 miles to the west.
"The only thing I was worried about was the water.
We don't worry about no wind," said Cray Bruce
as he stopped for gas in Crowley, Louisiana, 160 miles
west of New Orleans.
The winds shook street signs, whipped trees about and
knocked out electricity in some areas, but streets were
largely abandoned after officials said at least 1 million
people fled the storm.
Weather forecasters said Katrina may veer just east
of New Orleans and head toward neighboring Mississippi,
where strong winds were already building.
In Baton Rouge, officials said three people from a
New Orleans nursing home had died during their evacuation
to a Baton Rouge church. They said they were among nearly
two dozen people from the home who were on a bus stuck
in traffic for hours during the 80 mile trip.
NEW ORLEANS IN DANGER
Weather experts had warned of a possible storm surge
as high as 28 feet, enough to damage or destroy thousands
of homes and leave 1 million people homeless.
New Orleans is nearly surrounded by water, including
Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi, and about 70
percent of it lies below sea level, protected only by
a series of levees.
Mayor Ray Nagin, who ordered a mandatory evacuation,
warned the predicted storm surge could push water over
the levees and flood the city, including its historic
French Quarter.
Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said 26,000 people had taken
shelter in the Superdome, a giant, enclosed stadium
near the French Quarter.
"Please Pray for New Orleans" read a giant
hand-painted sign, appearing to sum up the fears that
had seized the city known as the Big Easy for its relaxed
life and party atmosphere.
New Orleans has not been hit directly by a hurricane
since 1965 when Hurricane Betsy blew in, flooding the
city. The storm killed about 75 people overall.
Katrina was making its second U.S. landfall after striking
southern Florida last week, where it caused widespread
flooding and seven deaths.
As Katrina plowed through the Gulf of Mexico, oil companies
shut down production from many of the offshore platforms
that provide a quarter of U.S. oil and gas production.
At least 42 percent of daily Gulf oil production, 20
percent of daily Gulf natural gas output and 8.5 percent
of national refining capacity was shut on Sunday, producers
and refiners said.
U.S. oil futures jumped nearly $5 a barrel in opening
trade to touch a peak of $70.80. The rise in oil prices
fed through to other financial markets, hurting stocks
and the dollar on fears that economic growth might be
curtailed but boosting safe havens such as government
bonds and gold.
The hurricane season starts June 1 and runs through
November 30. |
