NEW ORLEANS - Hurricane Katrina decimated three coastal states on Monday, swamping entire neighborhoods, smashing buildings and reportedly killing at least 55 people.
The Category 4 storm pounded parts of the north Gulf Coast with 145 mph winds and as much as 22 feet of storm surge, leaving more than a million people without power. Experts say Katrina could become the most costly natural disaster in U.S. history.
The storm jogged east of New Orleans just before landfall, putting the historic city on its weak side. Still, Katrina flooded an estimated 40,000 homes in nearby St. Bernard Parish and sent scores of residents scrambling to their roofs to pray for rescue.
In Mississippi, floodwaters buried parts of Biloxi and Gulfport. More than 20 feet of storm surge plowed into St. Louis Bay.
In Alabama's Mobile Bay, an oil barge broke loose and slammed into a bridge.
The death toll remained hard to pin down Monday night. The official count along the Gulf Coast remained at less than 10. But reports from one Mississippi county said 30 bodies were found in an apartment complex and seven more were found in a canal.
The numbers likely will rise in the coming days. Emergency workers were unable to access large swaths of the devastated area before darkness fell.
"Let me tell you something, folks: I've been out there. It's complete devastation," said fire Chief Pat Sullivan of Gulfport, Miss.
The American Red Cross has launched what it says will be the largest mobilization for a natural disaster in its history. More than 10,000 National Guard troops stood by to assist. President Bush pledged extensive federal help.
And forecasters warned that Katrina will continue to cause trouble.
In the next few days, the storm could drop as much as 15 inches of rain and spawn tornadoes in parts of the Southeast and Midwest.
* * *
Katrina officially moved onshore at 6:10 a.m. local time, 7:10 a.m. EDT, over the Louisiana coastal town of Buras (pronounced BYU-ruhs), population 1,400.
The storm's hurricane-strength winds stretched 125 miles from its center. Tropical storm force winds were felt as far away as Texas and the Florida Panhandle.
Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, congratulated his forecasters for missing the exact track by less than 20 miles. The usual margin of error is 80 miles.
"If that's not a superb forecast, I don't know what is," Mayfield said.
Hundreds of thousands of residents had fled north or into Florida and Texas to avoid Katrina. Many had no idea Monday night if their homes were still standing.
Many of the evacuees won't like what they find.
* * *
Some gambled and stayed, but few in the casino town of Biloxi won the high-stakes game against Katrina.
Thousands of residents were left without homes and without hope that anything would be the same.
Torrential rains and storm surge buried Biloxi under water. High winds ripped homes from foundations. Buildings were sent skittering down Lemoyne Boulevard, the city's main street.
"Biloxi is just gone," said Jackson County sheriff's Deputy Shawn Freeman.
Officials with the Mississippi emergency operations center confirmed four dead in that state late Monday.
But Jim Pollard, a spokesman for the Harrison County emergency operations center, told the New York Times that 30 people were found dead in an apartment complex in Biloxi. Seven others were found in the Industrial Seaway, a canal that runs from the gulf to Back Bay, he said.
About 60 miles away in the heart of Mobile, Ala., Water Street became a river, as did many other downtown streets. Some buildings were surrounded on all sides.
In some locations the water flowed 8 feet deep, said Steve Huffman, a spokesman with the Mobile County Emergency Management Agency. Outside of downtown, he said, it was 2 feet deeper.
Sean Hebert, 37, escaped his flooded home with some friends. One woman couldn't swim well, so they tied an ice chest to her to help her float.
Together, they hid under a bridge at Interstate 10 for hours, before Hebert made a break for D'Iberville High. His friends' fate was unknown late Monday.
"I should have stayed," he said.
* * *
In New Orleans, most of the levees and sea walls that keep the Gulf of Mexico and the Mississippi River at bay appeared to remain intact.
Widespread breaches, forecast if Katrina had hit New Orleans dead-on as a Category 5 storm, could have drowned parts of the bowl-shaped city, much of which is below sea level, with 30 feet of chemical- and sewage-laden water.
But Katrina still hammered the historic city. It ripped windows out of hotels, dumped floodwaters in parts of the city and toppled buildings. Thousands of homes were knocked over or flooded.
New Orleans resident Chris Meehan worked almost every night for a year restoring his two-story, 1830s house. He built a new foundation, lifting the home 5 inches. He spent more than $150,000. He lost three girlfriends over the place.
Katrina brought it tumbling down. The roof fell onto the road. Wood beams collapsed. Thigh-high water buried some of the rubble.
Meehan spent Sunday with friends on higher ground. He returned Monday evening to see what was left. He looked for wood to save. He looked for the doorknobs and locks. He stood on what used to be his second floor, right hand on his hip, left hand holding plywood.
"I'm going to go survey my corpse," he said.
In a low-lying neighborhood on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, a levee along a canal gave way and forced dozens of residents to flee or scramble to the roofs when water rose to their gutters.
"I've never encountered anything like it in my life. It just kept rising and rising and rising," said Bryan Vernon, who spent three hours on his roof.
The next couple of days, what emergency workers call the "golden 72 hours," will be crucial in mitigating the loss of life.
In most cases, trapped and injured residents will not live longer than that unless they are found and treated, emergency officials said. A massive search and rescue mission began Monday and will continue for days.
"We pray that the loss of life is very limited," said Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco. "But we fear that is not the case."
* * *
Katrina could knock Hurricane Andrew off its perch as the most expensive hurricane to strike the United States.
If not, it's a shoo-in for No. 2.
Andrew's devastating sweep across South Florida in 1992 caused an estimated $21-billion in insured losses when adjusted to 2004 dollars.
Early modeling estimates determined Katrina could cause as much as $26-billion in insured damage. On the low side of the estimates: $9-billion to $12-billion.
The estimates don't include uninsured property or losses caused by flood, which are covered under a national flood insurance program. Adding in those numbers could double loss totals.
--Times staff writers Jeff Harrington and Justin George contributed to this report, which used information from the Associated Press, Knight Ridder Newspapers, the Orlando Sentinel, the Mobile Register and the Birmingham Post-Herald.
