Hurricane Katrina plows into Louisiana coast, raising fears of catastrophe
"It's not life-threatening," Elow said as rain water dripped from her face. "God's got our back."
Elow's daughter, Darcel Elow, was awakened before dawn by a high-pitched howling that sounded like a trumpeting elephant.
"I thought it was the horn to tell everybody to leave out the hotel," she said as she walked the hall in her nightgown.
For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare scenario a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl of a city that is up to 10 feet below sea level in spots and relies on a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry from the Mississippi River on one side, Lake Pontchartrain on the other.
The fear is that flooding could overrun the levees and turn New Orleans into a toxic lake filled with chemicals and petroleum from refineries, as well as waste from ruined septic systems.
In the uptown area of New Orleans on the south shore of Lake Ponchartrain, floodwaters by 8 a.m. had already intruded on the first stories of some houses and some roads were impassable.
Crude oil futures spiked to more than $70 a barrel in Singapore for the first time Monday as Katrina targeted an area crucial to the country's energy infrastructure, but the price had slipped back to the $68 range by midday in Europe. The storm already forced the shutdown of an estimated 1 million barrels of refining capacity.
Terry Ebbert, New Orleans director of homeland security, said more than 4,000 national guardsmen were mobilizing in Memphis and would help police New Orleans streets.
The head of Jefferson Parish, which includes major suburbs and juts all the way to the storm-vulnerable coast, said some residents who stayed would be fortunate to survive.
"I'm expecting that some people who are die-hards will die hard," parish council President Aaron Broussard said.
The evacuation itself claimed lives. Three New Orleans nursing home residents died Sunday after being taken by bus to a Baton Rouge church. Don Moreau, of the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office, said the cause was probably dehydration.
Katrina hit the southern tip of Florida as a much weaker storm Thursday and was lamed for nine deaths. It left miles of streets and homes flooded and knocked out power to 1.45 million customers. It was the sixth hurricane to hit Florida in just over a year.
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