NEW ORLEANS - It started in the darkness before dawn.
Inside the massive Superdome, where nearly 10,000 of the city's poor and stranded had fled, the power failed around 5 a.m. The refugees groaned.
On an early morning radio interview, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin warned that water was pouring over the levee system in the Lower 9th Ward, a low-lying, heavily poor area east of downtown. He had heard people were trapped on their roofs.
The reports were reality, and the reality would turn into desperate rescue attempts.
Not long after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, about 6:10 a.m. locally, at least five fires broke out in the city and a building collapsed. Flames engulfed a house in Covington, north of the city. Firefighters, unable to venture out, had to let it burn.
As Katrina plowed ashore, floodwaters rose in Orleans Parish and the Lower 9th Ward. Numerous 911 call centers were shut down and evacuated.
Back at the Superdome, the wind ripped pieces of metal from the roof, leaving two holes that let water pour in. Sheets of metal flapped and rumbled 19 stories above the floor.
The storm mangled street signs, crumbled brick walls in the historic French Quarter, knocked trees onto streetcar tracks, blew out windows in high-rises. The water breached a levee along the 17th Street Canal, spilling into the Lakeview area south of Lake Pontchartrain. At the Hyatt Regency, sirens rang out as hotel officials evacuated more than 2,000 guests to two ballrooms on the third floor.
"This is not a test," one manager said over a loudspeaker. "This is not a drill."
On the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, entire neighborhoods of one-story homes were flooded to the rooflines. The Interstate 10 off-ramps nearby looked like boat ramps amid the whitecapped waves. Garbage cans and tires bobbed in the water.
An estimated 40,000 homes flooded in St. Bernard Parish, just east of the city.
By midmorning, most of the telephone system in metropolitan New Orleans had failed, further isolating the city as Katrina's center passed. People sent text messages instead.
Power outages seemed to have hit almost everyone, even Entergy New Orleans' command center. "We were expecting the worst and I think it's meeting those expectations for us at this point," said Dan Packer, the utility's chief executive officer.
A resident inside a bungalow not far from Lake Pontchartrain watched street floodwaters rise above the porch steps as he also battled rainwater pouring down his stairwell from a second-floor window that was blown out by high winds from the west. He said he planned to move with his dog to the second floor and pray.
On historic Jackson Square, two huge oak trees toppled outside the 278-year-old St. Louis Cathedral. They fell on either side of a marble statue of Jesus, snapping off just a thumb and forefinger of its outstretched hand.
As morning turned to afternoon, reports came that people who stayed in St. Bernard Parish were forced up into their attics to escape the floodwaters.
On one roof, two people yelled for help as murky water lapped at the gutters.
"Get us a boat!" a man in a black slicker shouted over the howling winds. Across the street, a woman called out from the second-story window of her brick home. "There are three kids in here," she said. "Can you help us?"
People who sought last-minute refuge at Chalmette High School were huddling in the hallways after windows were blown out and the water rose.
A group of reporters and photographers stumbled on a parade of looters streaming from Coleman's Retail Store downtown. The looters, men and women, teens and 40-year-olds, braved a steady rain and infrequent tropical storm wind gusts to tote boxes of clothing and shoes from the store.
Some looters were seen smiling and greeting each other with pleasantries as they passed.
About 2 p.m., Wes McDermott, from the office of emergency preparedness in New Orleans, said at least 100 calls had come from people in distress in the Lower 9th Ward and Eastern New Orleans. They were waiting on roofs and clinging to trees, he said. But McDermott said the city could not send rescue crews until the wind dropped below 50 mph.
Terry Ebbert, director of homeland security for the city of New Orleans, said he felt sure that fatalities will result from Katrina, based on the number of calls to emergency workers from people trapped in trees and attics.
In some of those cases, authorities lost communications with those pleading for help.
"Everybody who had a way or wanted to get out of the way of this storm was able to," Ebbert said. "For some that didn't, it was their last night on this Earth."
By late afternoon, authorities were racing against the waning daylight, trying to prevent any more last nights on Earth.
For miles in the 9th Ward, only rooftops remained visible above the floodwaters. Rows of homes were swallowed by water.
One man waded up to his chest, using a water cooler as a buoy. Bursts of orange lights flashed from the highest window in one house, where at least two people tried to attract the attention of rescuers.
There was a yell here, a shout there. The stranded included an elderly woman in a wheelchair and a barefoot boy. A drenched dog sat alone on a rooftop.
In the 7th Ward, east of the French Quarter, Harley Trustey donned waders to try to reach a house shared by his wife's aunts, both in their 80s, one of them bedridden and on a feeding tube.
He didn't make it.
After an hour of slogging through waist-deep oil-slick water, the retired engineering technician gave up and turned back.
"I have nothing but my 10 fingers, so if I get there what would I do for them?" sobbed Trustey, 61, a 40-year resident of New Orleans. "I feel in my heart that something has happened, and I want to get to them, but what would I do? I hope they can make it another day."
Dozens of others like him faced the same dilemma. Like Trustey, most gave up.
It was treacherous work, after all, and the darkness was gathering again.
--Information from the Associated Press, the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times was used in this report.
