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| Katrina Pounds New Orleans, Heads Ashore |
| In a daylong rampage, the powerful hurricane makes landfall, wreaking unspecified damage |
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Jason Sparapani (internews)  |
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Published 2005-08-30 12:28 (KST) |
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[Update: Aug. 29, 9 p.m. CST]
Fearsome Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans early Monday, flooding streets, tearing off roofs and blowing out windows, as unprecedented rains and 100-m.p.h. winds accompanied the storm.
But the city appeared to largely escape the apocalyptic scenarios feared by many state and weather officials, as the storm weakened when it hit just to the east of metropolitan New Orleans. There are reports that one levee failed, however, spilling over into an impoverished eastern area.
In neighboring Mississippi, the storm surge caused massive flooding and undetermined damage in the state's coastal communities. There were reports of at least three deaths attributed to Katrina, although state officials fear the toll may rise, as some people were unable or unwilling to leave their homes.
The storm damaged the roof of New Orleans' Superdome, where nearly 10,000 had taken emergency shelter. Elsewhere in the city, some houses were flooded to the ceilings, and photos document residents perched on roofs awaiting rescue.
According to a CNN report, Gov. Kathleen Blanco has urged evacuees to stay away, pointing to flooded streets, no power and no phones.
"It's too dangerous to come home," she said.
President George W. Bush, speaking today in Arizona, declared Louisiana and Mississippi disaster areas, enabling them to collect federal aid funding.
The storm, which has been downgraded to a Category 1, with winds of 65 m.p.h., inched northeast across Mississippi today, bringing with it threats of heavy rain, strong winds and a tornado watch for eastern Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia.
(Compiled from news reports)
[Aug. 29, 4 a.m. CST]
 | |  Hurricane Katrina is heading straight for the mainland and New Orleans. | | | ©2005 SSEC | | Cherished by conventioneers and frat boys, New Orleans' reputation as a party town is a near cliche. After all, it is the home of the year-round Carnival, where beads fly as freely from Bourbon Street revelers as from greeters at Harrah's casino. Only there can one hear Zydeco nonstop, drink walking out the door and see a brass band strike up on a business-district corner. It is equal parts relaxed, raucous, hypnotic and nervous, a city of the senses.
But the brand New Orleans speaks poorly for is its other side; its families, its struggles, its day-to-day. It is a town where toddlers coo and drool on mommies' shoulders, where teenage girls concoct daydream marriages, and college kids pull all-nighters. It is like every town in America. And yet it is like no town.
Known for its vibrant, multicultural population, jazz greats and Mardi Gras celebrations, New Orleans is a city sandwiched by water -- the Mississippi River to the south, massive Lake Pontchartrain to the north and marshes along the Gulf of Mexico. The city is eight feet below sea level -- you walk up an incline to the Mississippi from downtown -- and the most vulnerable in the country to hurricanes.
Tonight, as the first winds started lapping the city from across the Mississippi, a few locals have defied Mayor Ray Nagin's mandatory evacuation and stayed, forgoing long lines to enter the Superdome -- home of the New Orleans Saints and one of the city's last-resort shelters. They have chosen drinks, company and home comforts over security.
But as reported by The Associated Press, Aaron Broussard, an official from Jefferson Parish, which borders the city, had a not-so-bright forecast for the stragglers:
"I'm expecting that some people who are die-hards will die hard," he said.
Since the hurricane began its steady advance over the Gulf, strengthening all the way toward New Orleans, residents began an exodus, with thousands fleeing on highways to Houston, Jackson, Miss., and further north.
New Orleans, like any city in America, is a hometown, a place of commitments and trials, bonds and burials, but to leave a city whose levees may not hold up through what could be a 28-foot storm surge, is something that though dreaded, is just an inconvenient part of life.
"This is it. This is the storm [people] have been fearing for a hundred years," said Cathie Eustis, a teacher of English as a Second Language in the city.
Living in New Orleans for two years, I grew accustomed to the infectious city attitude -- a reedy tolerance of the inevitable mixed with a love for place perhaps unequaled in the country. So I knew that in a city where many explanations to newcomers begin with "In New Orleans," people would not be happy with the mayor's edict.
Not that they don't agree with his decision to issue the evacuation decree -- many laud him as a fine leader -- but here is a town that knows almost too well who, what and why it is.
And this is exactly what makes New Orleans hard to leave, for visitors and natives alike. It is a pride in knowing the vibrant Creole tomatoes, the tangy Turtle Soup at Gallatoire's on Bourbon Street and the smooth, polished tones of native son Irvin Mayfield, of the band, Los Hombres Calientes. New Orleans is in the blood of the people who live here, and will stay with them no matter what havoc Hurricane Katrina wreaks.
This is a storm that, according to The AP, "... has the potential to be as disastrous as the Asian tsunami. Tens of thousands of people could lose their lives. We could witness the total destruction of New Orleans as we know it."
It is a thought not readily accepted by the city's 485,000. What, they are thinking, would New Orleans be without its brilliant towers of Saint Louis Cathedral, the creaky St. Charles streetcar or the blue-and-white awning of Commander's Palace?
That the city will be forever altered is foreign to New Orleanians, as most have seen storm after storm skip or just graze the city -- 1965's Betsy being the only direct hit, bringing with her 120 mph winds and unprecedented flooding. That storm caused the deaths of 67 people, as recorded by the Red Cross.
The devout in New Orleans credit a statue of the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Prompt Succor, with having spared the city for so long. Others say it was sheer luck.
Whatever it was, the city now faces a dawn of a severe storm -- no longer the category 5 cruising across the Gulf Sunday -- but a category 4, with top winds of 150 miles an hour and a possible storm surge of 16 to 22 feet, according to the Weather Channel. The potential damage is massive, and not just in coastal areas. Katrina is predicted to move across Alabama and Mississippi, and possibly Ohio and the Northeastern U.S.
Katrina is a storm like no other that has hit the U.S., and New Orleans is a city that stands on its own. With luck, succor, or anything else, it will do so for years to come.
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