New Orleans 'Significant' # deathsIt's absolutely terrible. 80% of City of New Orl is under water.
-Lucy.
https://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/30/katrina.neworleans/index.html
'It's almost like a nightmare, that I hope we wake up from'
Tuesday, August 30, 2005; Posted: 12:08 p.m. EDT (16:08 GMT)
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin warned of a "significant" death toll as the exact scope of Hurricane Katrina's wrath remained unknown in the Crescent City.
"The city of New Orleans is in a state of devastation," Nagin told WWL TV on Monday night. "We probably have 80 percent of our city underwater, with some sections of our city, the water is as deep as 20 feet."
Katrina came ashore early Monday as a Category 4 hurricane, strafing New Orleans with 120 mph winds. (Full story)
New Orleans, a city of nearly half a million with a metropolitan area population of 1.3 million, was under a mandatory evacuation order issued Sunday.
However, many people defied that order and remained in homes and shelters. Thousands were shielded from the storm in the city's Louisiana Superdome.
Yet, the mayor said, "My heart is heavy tonight," Nagin said. "I don't have any good news to share."
"We're going to have a significant amount of loss of life in the city," he said, citing reports coming in from fire, police and National Guard sources. (See video of rooftop rescues in the deluged city -- 4:43)
Louisiana officials have released no death toll, but Nagin predicted eastern New Orleans and the city's 9th Ward would be the hardest hit, noting the National Guard would be setting up temporary morgues.
Nagin said bodies have been seen floating in flood waters.
"It's not a pretty picture."
Nagin said both both New Orleans airports are underwater and there would be no electricity in the city for four to six weeks. Natural gas leaks have been reported throughout town, he said.
"Now is not the time to return to the city," Nagin said to those who had evacuated ahead of Katrina, saying they would have to wait weeks, if not months.
"It's almost like a nightmare, that I hope we wake up from," Nagin said.
Nagin confirmed reports that a two-block-long part of a levee has given way to Lake Pontchartrain at the city's 17th Street Canal -- near the city's center. (See video explaining where water flowed when the levee gave way -- 2:11)
"There's a serious leak and it's causing the water to continue to rise," he said.
The New Orleans Fire Department said the break was about 200 feet long.
Bryan Vernon, who lives in the neighborhood, told The Associated Press he had been on his roof for three hours calling for someone to help him and his fiancee from the rising water.
"I've never encountered anything like it in my life," Vernon told AP. "It just kept rising and rising and rising."
Along a street that had turned into a river filled with garbage cans and refuse, a woman leaned from the second-story window of a brick home and begged to be rescued, AP reported.
"There are three kids in here," the woman told AP. "Can you help us?"
In New Orleans' central business district, Karen Troyer Caraway, vice president of Tulane University Hospital, said water at the facility was initially rising at the rate of a foot an hour and had reached the top of the first floor.
"It's dumping all the lake water in Orleans Parish," Caraway said. "It's essentially running down Canal Street. We have whitecaps on Canal Street."
"We now are completely surrounded by six feet of water, and are about to get on the phone with FEMA to start talking about evacuation plans," Caraway said. "The water is rising so fast, I can't even begin to describe how fast it is rising."
Caraway said she didn't know whether any pumps had been turned on to pump the water, but said, "they're not going to be able to compete with Lake Pontchartrain."
Tulane hospital has moved its emergency room to the second floor, Caraway said. It has been on emergency generator power for the last 24 hours, but if water continued rising rapidly, that power will be lost, swamping the power source.
Other hurricane damage Nagin reported included flooding in the city north of Interstate 10, the destruction by fire of the Southern Yacht Club and a leaking oil tanker that has run aground.
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