Fergie's Tech Blog

Katrina: Utter Devastation

Image Source: MSNBC / David J. Phillip / AP

Floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina fill the streets
near downtown New Orleans Tuesday.
The Superdome, where 10,000 residents were
still taking refuge, is visible near the top.

As authorities assessed the death and destruction from Hurricane Katrina Tuesday, officials in this Gulf Coast city said they feared that hundreds of residents perished after being trapped in their homes when a 30-foot storm surge came ashore.

“It’s going to be in the hundreds,” Biloxi city spokesman Vincent Creel said of the expected death toll.

“Camille was 200, and we’re looking at a lot more than that,” he said, referring to Hurricane Camille, which hit the area in 1969 and destroyed swaths of Mississippi and Louisiana.

In getting their first good look at the wide swath of the Gulf Coast slammed by Katrina, authorities on Tuesday found tens of thousands of homes flooded or wiped out, hundreds of victims still awaiting rescue.

Aerial footage showed most of New Orleans under water and mile after mile of coastline in Mississippi and Alabama wiped out. Debris from flattened buildings littered streets, and the smell of natural gas from broken lines wafted through the air. In Gulfport, Miss., a casino was lifted out of the water and onto a hotel.

posted by Fergie @ 8/30/2005 11:48:00 AM