It’s almost like a nightmare that I hope we wake up from.” “With some sections of our city, the water is as deep as seven meters. “Our city is in a state of devastation,” he told a local television station. The mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, estimated that 80 percent of the city was flooded. It is unclear how long it will take to plug the levees, including a 200 foot-wide hole in the 17th Street Canal, which, like the water that surrounds most of New Orleans, is at a higher elevation than most of the city itself. Late on Tuesday the Associated Press was reporting that a second levee had burst, increasing the flow of water into the city. According to a report in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, “The breach sent a churning sea of water from Lake Pontchartrain coursing across Lakeview and into Mid-City, Carrollton, Gentilly, City Park and neighborhoods farther south and east.” Water continued to rise throughout Tuesday and showed no signs of stopping.įlood waters covered the city’s famous French Quarter, which escaped serious damage during the initial impact of the hurricane and is on higher ground than much of the city. Sometime on Monday, a levee on the 17th Street Canal, near Lake Pontchartrain on the north side, ruptured, flooding much of the city. While initial reports on Monday suggested that the city was lucky to have escaped a direct hit from the hurricane, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco told a news conference on Tuesday, “The devastation is greater than our worst fears. Holloway, referring to the giant tsunami that devastated Indonesia, Sri Lanka and other parts of South Asia last December.Īfter the storm had passed, many in New Orleans who thought their homes had escaped relatively unharmed watched with astonishment as the water levels rose throughout Monday and Tuesday. “This is our tsunami,” said the mayor of Biloxi, A.J. Many Mississippi residents along the coast were trapped in their homes and swept away by a 30-foot surge that accompanied the hurricane. No estimates of fatalities in the New Orleans metropolitan area have been released. Vincent Creel, an official from Biloxi, told Reuters that the death toll is “going to be in the hundreds.” He added, “ Camille was 200, and we’re looking at a lot more than that.” Where there were once houses, now there is only debris and the scattered belongings of residents.Īn official with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said Tuesday that at least 115 people in Mississippi were killed by the hurricane. Parts of Mississippi on the Gulf coast were hit by the center of the hurricane and destroyed. There have been scattered reports of bodies floating in the flood waters, particularly on the east side of New Orleans and in the adjacent St Bernard Parish, where some 40,000 homes were flooded. Hundreds and perhaps thousands in New Orleans were forced to retreat to their roofs, often by hacking through their attic ceilings using hatchets and knives. The reports in the media paint a tragic and even hellish picture. Clean drinking water is scarce, and the flood waters covering city streets are contaminated with gas from ruptured gas lines, chemicals and human waste, raising a serious danger of infectious disease. At least one million people in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are without electrical power, and officials say it may take weeks to fully restore service to all affected regions. One can only speculate as to the effects on the city if the hurricane had passed only ten miles west of where it did.ĭamage estimates are in the tens of billions of dollars. That the city of over one million was spared the direct hit which many at first feared, and nevertheless experienced such massive damage, only underscores the fact that the systems protecting the city are entirely inadequate. Large parts of the coastal regions of these states along the Gulf of Mexico have experienced extensive flooding, destruction of buildings and homes, and loss of life.Īs the toll mounts, it becomes increasingly clear that the city of New Orleans was remarkably unprepared for such a disaster. The enormous devastation wreaked upon parts of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama by Hurricane Katrina is only beginning to come to light, even as the situation in New Orleans grows worse by the hour.
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