NEW ORLEANS — Buildings collapsed, floods inundated entire neighborhoods and hundreds of desperate residents retreated to wind-blown roofs Monday as one of the most sweeping hurricanes of modern times drilled through the upper Gulf Coast.
Authorities blamed Hurricane Katrina for two highway deaths in Alabama. The casualty toll was expected to mount as conditions improved and rescue workers reached more areas.
The storm weakened slightly and wobbled toward the east just before reaching land, sparing New Orleans the cataclysmic devastation many had feared. But, most agreed, it was more than bad enough.
Katrina’s core roared very close to the below-sea-level city of 485,000 people, slamming eastern sections with one edge of its destructive eye wall. Winds of 100 mph rocked the area. Its storm surge and torrential rain submerged vast regions, with 40,000 homes flooded in St. Bernard Parish alone.
Moreover, it pummeled 270 miles of coastline across four states, striking particularly hard at Gulfport, Miss.
Pat Sullivan, Gulfport’s fire chief, said downtown buildings were “imploding” and the business district was largely under water. “It’s complete devastation,” he said.
Said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour: “We know some people got trapped, and we pray they are OK.”
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin said that at least 20 buildings collapsed, including a small apartment complex. Countless windows shattered in high-rise buildings, the curtains of hotel rooms billowing in the wind.
Pieces of roof from the Superdome, a makeshift shelter for about 10,000 people, peeled off and crashed into the 22nd floor of the downtown Hyatt Regency, breaking windows and buckling walls.
Hundreds of Hyatt guests and storm refugees were evacuated out of their rooms around midnight to a third-floor ballroom. They rested on bedspreads and pillows they dragged down from their hotel rooms.
Flood waters breeched at least two of the city’s crucial flood-control levees, Nagin said, and three pumps failed.
Hours after the storm hit, about 200 people remained atop their roofs in New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward after climbing there to escape 10-foot floods.
By mid-afternoon, with the storm largely passed, Nagin said he was grateful the damage wasn’t worse, but he pleaded with residents eager to return to whatever was left of their homes.
“Please be patient,” he said. “There’s nothing for you to come back to right now. There’s water everywhere. When are we going to get life back to normal? I don’t know.”
The city of Gulfport, 55 miles northeast of New Orleans and nearly under the storm’s eye wall, also suffered severe blows.
Hospitals sustained heavy damage, sailboats floated in the middle of U.S. 90, and casinos in the area were said to be deeply flooded.
Along the Mississippi coast, a 28-foot storm surge — the wall of water that accompanies the center of a hurricane — knocked homes and other buildings off their foundations. People trapped in attics and roofs begged for rescue but had to wait hours for assistance.
About 370,000 customers in southeastern Louisiana were without power, along with another 130,000 along the rest of the Gulf Coast.
New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass said three people were arrested for looting — not just before the storm passed, but before its center even arrived. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said in a radio interview.
Katrina’s core made landfall almost directly south of New Orleans as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane with 145-mph wind.
It weakened steadily as it moved inland but remained extremely dangerous, according to the National Hurricane Center, which warned of 10 inches of rain over the Ohio Valley and the manifest dangers of inland flooding as far north as Ohio.
A relatively small and weak hurricane when it rolled through South Florida late last week, Katrina blossomed into one for the record books after it reached the Gulf of Mexico and turned north.
When the storm’s center reached land, its hurricane winds of at least 74 mph reached 125 miles from the center and its tropical storm winds of at least 39 mph stretched 270 miles from the center. From tip to tip, Katrina’s clouds covered an area larger than the state of Florida.
Dauphin Island, Ala., reported sustained winds of 76 mph with a gust to 102 mph. Mobile, Ala., reported a gust to 83 mph. Pensacola reported sustained winds of 52 mph with a gust to 69 mph.
