Hundreds feared dead after Hurricane Katrina

NEW ORLEANS - Army engineers raced to staunch rising floodwaters submerging historic New Orleans as helicopters plucked frantic survivors from rooftops and hundreds were feared dead after Hurricane Katrina tore across the US Gulf Coast.

Authorities made plans to remove thousands of storm refugees from the Superdome stadium and other shelters in New Orleans and forged a bold scheme to airdrop giant sandbags to plug breaches in the city's protective levee system as water from Lake Pontchartrain poured into the city.

Looters struck, adding to the city's misery. They waded through flood water to ransack electronics stores, drugstores and supermarkets. They rolled carts full of merchandise and carried bundles and boxes of beer from downtown stores.

The economic cost of the hurricane could be the highest in US history, as much as US$26 billion, according to risk analysts' estimates.

"It looks like we've been nuked," said Hayes Bolton, 65, as he guarded the rubble of his pawn shop in Biloxi, Mississippi, near where the homes of his grandmother, mother and aunt were destroyed by the storm.

"This is just a tragedy. It makes you want to crawl in a hole."

As New Orleans coped with a flood, Mississippi grappled with the prospect that hundreds of people may have died when a 9 meter storm surge blasted ashore, a city spokesman said. Cadaver dogs were being brought in to help find the dead.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said there were reports of up to 80 dead in the Biloxi area, but US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the state's unofficial estimates were "probably way too low."

Biloxi spokesman Vincent Creel told Reuters "It's going to be in the hundreds."

Rescuers struggled through high water and mountains of debris to reach areas crushed by Katrina when it struck the Gulf Coast on Monday. The storm inflicted catastrophic damage as it slammed into Louisiana with 224 km/h winds, then raged into Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee.

PLUCKED TO SAFETY

Across the region, hundreds of people climbed onto rooftops to escape the rising water that lapped at the eaves. They used axes, and in at least one case a shotgun, to blast holes in roofs so they could escape through the attics.

Police took boats into flooded areas to rescue some of the stranded and others were lifted off rooftops by helicopter. The Coast Guard helped rescue 1200 in New Orleans on Monday night and thousands more all along the Gulf Coast on Tuesday.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco urged residents to hold a day of prayer on Wednesday to "calm our spirits" and give thanks for survival. "The situation is untenable," she said. "It's just heartbreaking."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reported bodies floating in the floodwaters, which may have measured 20 feet deep in places.

Officials said a 0.9-meter shark had been spotted cruising the flooded streets.

"What I saw today is equivalent to what I saw flying over the tsunami in Indonesia. There are places that are no longer there," said Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana after flying over the damaged area.

New Orleans is a bowl-like city mostly below sea level and protected by levees or embankments. The levees gave way overnight in at least three places, including a 60 meter breach that allowed the lake waters to pour into the city center.

The US military planned to use helicopters to drop 1360-kg, gravel-filled sandbags into the breaches, the worst up to 6 meter deep. Authorities were also considering plugging the gap with shipping containers filled with sand.

Blanco said a plan was being developed to evacuate the Superdome, which had no electricity, and other shelters.

Governors in the stricken states called out more than 7,500 National Guard troops to help control looting, remove debris and deliver aid.

ABC News said the looters in New Orleans numbered in the thousands and carted away anything that was unguarded while a few overwhelmed police officers stood idly by.

In another area, a special weapons team showed up with machine guns prominently displayed in a show of force.

"This ain't no time for this kind of foolishness but people trapped, a lot of them hungry, they don't have no water, need medicine. I need insulin right now," a woman told ABC.

Four people were confirmed dead in St. Tammany Parish, east of New Orleans, a local official said.

Most of the deaths appear to have been caused by the storm surge, which swept as far as a mile inland in parts of Mississippi.

"From the destruction I've seen, I think there'll be some people we never find," Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway said after a helicopter tour.

Biloxi Fire Captain Michael Thomas said an entire apartment complex collapsed and officials believed there are many bodies in the building. At a nearby cemetery, coffins drifted out of mausoleums. "Caskets are everywhere," he said.

Katrina dragged a casino as big as a football field 100 metres over a seafront street and set it down in a parking lot.

In Mississippi's Hancock County, emergency workers went from house to house and put black paint on those where people died, CNN said. They planned to return later to pick up the bodies.

PATH OF DESTRUCTION

Before striking the Gulf Coast, Katrina last week hit southern Florida and killed seven people.

It knocked out electricity to about 2.3 million customers, or nearly 5 million people, in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, utility companies said. Restoring power could take weeks, they warned.

The storm swept through oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico, source of 20 per cent to 25 per cent of US production of the commodities. US oil prices on Tuesday jumped US$3.65 a barrel to peak at US$70.85 as oil firms assessed damage.

Convoys of Humvees and military trucks streamed south on Interstate 65 through Alabama with loads of fuel and power generators. Special Forces boat crews were dispatched to conduct search and rescue operations in flooded communities.

- REUTERS