Katrina Redux (part I)
Katrina left New Orleans flooded and severely damaged, but feeling for the moment as though it had dodged a bullet. It was bad, but it wasn't it as bad as it could have been. Or so it was thought on Monday.
The truth was, though, that Katrina was a storm of surprises--the movement toward New Orleans, the last-minute jog northward on its way to New Orleans, the return back past Mississippi's Gulf coast on its way north. And though it wasn't immediately obvious in New Orleans, where hope was blooming throughout the day Monday, Katrina would prove, in time, as devastating to the Crescent City as it had to the entire Gulf Coast, from Louisiana to Alabama.
Katrina made landfall at
Buras, Louisiana in Plaquemines Parish, at approximately 6:10am CDT. Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana's southernmost parish, estimated that
95% of its 27,000 residents had evacuated by Sunday afternoon. Photos on the Parish's website, taken Tuesday, 30 August,
reveal massive destruction and flooding. Barges, steel fishing boats, and smaller craft were picked up out of the water and thrown onto shore. At least one marina was almost completely empty of boats. Mobile homes were tossed about like toys. A water tower and a radio tower lay on the ground as though smashed and twisted by giant fists. Trees lie across roads and railroad tracks, and at least one road shows signs of having been undercut by water and have collapsed.
Plaquemines' levees have trapped water inside their walls, leaving it no means of escape; everything south of Port Sulphur is under water.
After making landfall, Katrina worked her way up to New Orleans, leaving behind a trail of destruction. Extensive flooding left parts of the city under 20 feet of water and others under as much as 8 feet; some homes were surrounded by water up to their rooftops; countless windows were blown in; several buildings collapsed; the Teflon coating of the Superdome roof was left shredded. Parts of Jefferson and Orleans parishes were flooded. St Bernard Parish, northeast of the city, suffered severe flooding, as many as 40,000 of its homes under water.
Communities on the north shore of Lake Ponchartrain fared badly as well. Slidell, on the north side of the lake, was inundated, and was under chest-deep water from the lake to the Old Spanish Trail exit. Covington and Mandeville suffered "extensive wind and tree damage." The I-10 bridge linking Orleans (city of New Orleans) and St Tammany (Slidell) Parishes has been severely damaged, some sections missing entirely and others toppled off their supports.
Katrina headed east out of New Orleans toward Mississippi, and the storm downgraded to a Category Three hurricane, with winds of 125 mph as it made landfall again, near the Louisiana-Mississippi border.
Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour had declared a state of emergency on Friday, 26 August 2005. Mississippi coastal residents began evacuating Saturday afternoon, and were under mandatory evacuation on Sunday. As of Monday approximately 8500 people were in 79 shelters across the state. American Red Cross shelters in Mississippi were filled to capacity.
By Friday afternoon, 12 platforms and 9 oil rigs in the Gulf had been evacuated, and the Air Force had started evacuation of aircraft in at least two bases in the Florida panhandle to prevent damage to the planes.
Storm surge in Mississippi was estimated at 20 feet, later amended to 25 feet, slamming into the towns along U.S. Highway 90. which was underwater Tuesday. Katrina left Mississippi's Gulf Coast devastated, from Bay St. Louis to Gulfport and eastward to Biloxi and Pascagoula. An estimated 90% of the buildings along the coast in Gulfport and Biloxi were destroyed. Flooding endangered streets and homes as far as six miles inland.
Bay St. Louis, west of Gulfport, was left entirely devastated. The Bay St Louis Bridge was also destroyed. In Long Beach, also west of Gulfport, "[t]here [was] no building standing within the first three blocks...[not] one structure that's livable" (cite), though the Friendship Oak, a 600-year old tree, survived.
Early reports out of Gulfport Monday confirmed "major street blockage" and extensive damage to buildings, as well as boats into buildings. A nearby Coast Guard station was destroyed, and Gulfport streets were strewn with trucks. Eastbound lanes of I-10 between Gulfport and Biloxi were impassible due to debris dumped on the road by the storm. Gulfport's Fire Chief described Katrina's aftermath in the city as "complete devastation." (cite)
In Biloxi, there were "10- and 20-block areas where there was nothing--not one home standing," according to Governor Barbour. The Gulfport Memorial Hospital in Biloxi reported major damage and broken windows; all of Biloxi's casinos sustained heavy damage; 30 people in one beachfront apartment building in Biloxi were confirmed dead. The Biloxi-Ocean Springs Bridge was also destroyed. In Ocean Springs, as many as 30% of homes may be "severely damaged."
Serious flooding in Pascagoula left the town "razed to the ground", cluttered with matchstick debris from shattered houses and downed power lines and trees. Boats came to rest hundreds of feet inland. Most buildings "have simply disappeared," and no one knew, at day's end, how many people in Pascagoula had died.
Alabama's Mobile Bay saw a storm surge of 10 feet. Downtown Mobile experienced extensive flooding, downed trees and wires, broken power poles, and , but no serious injuries or deaths had been reported as of Tuesday morning. An oil rig on the Mobile River was dragged loose from its moorings; it drifted and lodged beneath the west end of the Cochrane-Africatown bridge on U.S. 98. Power outages in Alabama spread as Katrina exploded transformers all over Alabama's coastal areas.
The rest of the Alabama coastal region was hit hard as well. In Gulf Shores, still recovering from Hurricane Ivan a year ago, waves "crashed over the seawalls," driven by howling winds. Dauphin Island, off the Alabama coast, had nearly 7 feet of storm surge and suffered significant damage on its west end. On the western end of the island, about 1/3 of houses were destroyed and another third were estimated to have "significant damage."
Along the Gulf Coast, at least 8 refineries shut down or reduced production on Monday 29 August as a result of the storm. Airports in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Biloxi, Mobile, and Pensacola were closed, causing hundreds of flights to be either canceled or diverted. By the end of the day, President Bush made emergency disaster declarations for the states of Mississippi and Louisiana, to free up federal funds.
At the end of Monday, however, as Katrina moved northward and away from the Coast, the extent of the damage was barely known. Many areas were underwater. There was no power and little or no clean drinking water. Winds remained high throughout Monday afternoon, and many survivors from New Orleans to Pascagoula, and possibly even further eastward, were trapped on rooftops in attics, trying to avoid the rising floodwaters.
Rescue work was beginning, where the winds had died down enough so that conditions were safe to do so. But the work to clear away the leftovers from Katrina's party on the Gulf Coast was already looking overwhelming--destruction and tragedy on a massive scale.
The approach of sunrise on Tuesday found more than 1 million residents without power, many of them without clean drinking water. 40,000 evacuees were in Red Cross shelters, and an untold number who had evacuated Sunday were spread out in hotels and the houses of friends and relatives across the Southeast and Texas. And even before the full extend of the damage was known, even on Tuesday morning, officials said that it might be months before most could return.
And on Tuesday morning, across the Gulf Coast, local authorities concentrated search and rescue efforts.