New Orleans Inundated as Levees Break After Hurricane Katrina

One day after New Orleans appeared to escape the worst of Hurricane Katrina, 80 percent of the city was inundated when three levees were breached and emergency services struggled to evacuate at least 1,900 people.

Water levels are still rising in the city of 500,000, some of which lies as much as 20 feet (6 meters) below sea level, Sergeant Frank Coates, a spokesman for the Louisiana state police, said in a telephone interview from Baton Rouge.

Katrina swept over the U.S. Gulf states two days ago, killing as many as 100 people and causing damage estimated as high as $25 billion in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama. Crude oil rose above $70 a barrel in New York amid shortages in the region, which produces one-third of the oil and a fifth of the natural gas in the U.S.

``Getting people stranded on their rooftops to safety is a priority,'' Coates said. ``We want to get people out because the water is contaminated.'' He said there had been at least one shooting, and some looting, and a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed.

Water levels in New Orleans are still rising because there are at least three breaches in the city's levee system that authorities have been unable to fix, Coates said.

It may be weeks before people are allowed back to some areas of the city, said Lieutenant Kevin Cowan, spokesman for the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Buildings Destroyed

``The infrastructure is damaged so bad that it'll have to be completely rebuilt,'' Cowan said in a telephone interview from Baton Rouge. ``Buildings are down, parts of roads have been washed away, utilities are gone.''

Levees in New Orleans were breached or overflowed in at least five areas, Jim Hill, an officer with the U.S. Army's Corps of Engineers, said in a telephone interview from Baton Rouge, citing a ``preliminary'' assessment today.

A breach on the 17th Street Canal may be as wide as 500 feet (150 meters), he said. A section of the Industrial Waterway measuring ``a few hundred feet'' has been breached or overtopped, and there are three smaller breaks or overflowing sections in Bayou Bienvue, in the east of the city, he said.

About 1.4 million customers were without power late yesterday from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, down from more than 2.1 million earlier in the day, according to estimates from Entergy Corp., Cleco Corp. and Southern Co., the parent companies of utilities in Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. President George W. Bush declared parts of Mississippi and Alabama major disaster areas, freeing up federal aid.

Insurance Claims

U.S. insurers such as State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. said the destruction left by Katrina means it may be days before they can determine claims that storm modeler AIR Worldwide Inc. yesterday estimated could reach $25 billion. Researchers said the storm may be the second-most expensive in U.S. history.

Authorities in New Orleans had received emergency calls from more than 1,900 people stranded by floods, said Coates of the Louisiana police. Bodies were pulled out of the water to avoid health hazards. There is no death toll for the area yet, he said.

Health and sanitation risks and getting supplies, especially bottled water, to people who aren't in shelters are a ``major area'' of concern, Nicholas Stahl, a spokesman for the Louisiana Security and Emergency Preparedness Department, said in a telephone interview today from Baton Rouge.

``The whole water supply in the city is contaminated,'' Stahl said. ``There's everything from gas station fuel to the contents of people's toilets mixing in with the water.''

Fuel Shortages

Pumping water out of flooded areas is ``a waste of effort'' until the breaches in the levees can be fixed, Stahl said. With fuel shortages and no power, engineers were struggling to get heavy equipment to the breaches, he said.

The U.S. Coast Guard rescued thousands yesterday in the New Orleans area, which remained flooded in water as deep as 20 feet, the agency said on its Web site.

At least 50 people died in Harrison County, Mississippi, including as many as 30 in a Biloxi apartment building that collapsed, Mississippi Emergency Management spokesman Jim Pollard said in an interview yesterday.

Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour put the death toll as high as 80 in Harrison County, in an interview on NBC's ``Today'' show yesterday. The New York Times, citing an emergency management official, reported that 100 were killed.

Curfews were in place in the coastal counties of Harrison, Jackson, and Hancock, where much of the land is flooded and also in Jones County, further north, Pollard said. The state capital, Jackson, which isn't in the county of the same name, was also under curfew, and 80 percent of Mississippi was without power, he said, adding that ``very little'' looting had taken place.