Rescue crews working to save hundreds still trapped

Rescue crews were frantically working last night to save hundreds of people trapped by floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the US Gulf Coast states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama and left dozens of people dead.

The massive storm, one of the most powerful to hit the United States, killed at least 56 people.

The death toll was expected to rise sharply from Gulf Coast towns and cities pounded by a day of ferocious winds and blinding rain.

The storm submerged entire neighbourhoods up to their roofs, swamped Mississippi's beachfront casinos and blew out windows in hospitals and high-rises.

For New Orleans - a dangerously vulnerable city because it sits mostly below sea level - it was not the apocalyptic storm forecasters had feared.

But it was bad enough, in New Orleans and elsewhere along the coast, where scores of people had to be rescued from rooftops and attics as the floodwaters rose around them.

"The state today has suffered a grievous blow," said Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour.

In Mississippi's Harrison County, emergency operations centre spokesman Jim Pollard said an estimated 50 people were killed by Katrina, with the bulk of the deaths at an apartment complex in Biloxi. Three other people were killed by falling trees in Mississippi and two died in a traffic accident in Alabama, authorities said.

"Some of them, it was their last night on Earth," said Terry Ebbert, chief of homeland security for New Orleans, of people who ignored orders to evacuate the city. "That's a hard way to learn a lesson."

Katrina knocked out power to more than a million people from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, and authorities said it could be two months before electricity was 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.

Oil refiners said damage to equipment in the Gulf region appeared to be minimal, and oil prices dropped back from highs above US$70 ($101) a barrel.

- REUTERS