New Orleans evacuates as storm nears
- From: "Salahuddin" <ask@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 18:50:03 GMT
LOL! This is the alleged superpower? No... Allah you are the only
superpower!
New Orleans evacuates as storm nears
by
Sunday 28 August 2005 5:46 PM GMT
The mayor has ordered an immediate evacuation for all of New Orleans, a city
below sea level with 485,000 inhabitants, as Hurricane Katrina bore down
with wind up to nearly 282kph and threats of a massive storm surge.
Acknowledging that large numbers of people, many of them stranded tourists,
would be unable to leave before the eye of the storm strikes land sometime
Monday morning, the city set up 10 places of last resort, including the
Superdome arena.
"This is a once-in-a-lifetime event," Mayor Ray Nagin said. "The city of New
Orleans has never seen a hurricane of this magnitude hit it directly."
The mayor said a direct hit by Katrina's storm surge would likely top the
levees that protect the city from the surrounding water of Lake
Pontchartrain, the Mississippi River and marshes. The bowl-shaped city must
pump water out during normal times, and the hurricane threatens electricity
that runs the pumps.
"We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared," Nagin said.
President George Bush pledged federal support.
Rain started falling on extreme southeastern Louisiana by midday Sunday as
the storm moved across the Gulf of Mexico towards land.
Highways in Mississippi and Louisiana were jammed as people headed away from
Katrina's expected landfall. All lanes were limited to northbound traffic on
two major interstate highways.
Oil production
Beyond the Gulf Coast, Katrina was "unmitigated bad news for consumers"
because it had shut down offshore production of at least 1 million barrels
of oil daily and threatened refinery and import operations around New
Orleans, said Peter Beutel, an oil analyst in New Canaan, Connecticut. He
said crude oil could top $70 a barrel by Monday or Tuesday.
If Katrina maintained strength, it would be the fourth Category 5 hurricane
on record to strike the United States.
"Have God on your side, definitely have God on your side. ... It's very
frightening," said Nancy Noble, sitting in snail's-pace traffic on
Interstate 10 heading for Natchez, Mississippi. She and three others were
crowded in a car with a puppy and their essential papers.
The Superdome was taking in people with special problems Sunday morning.
People on walkers, some with oxygen tanks, began checking in when it opened
about 8am.
Landfall forecast for Monday
At 11am EDT (1500GMT), the National Hurricane Center said Katrina's maximum
sustained wind speed had stepped up to nearly 282 kph, with higher gusts.
Forecasters said the weather would start getting rough late Sunday and the
eye would strike land early Monday.
The mayor said people who opted to go to the Superdome should take enough
food and supplies to last three to five days. He said that police and
firefighters would fan out throughout the city telling residents to get out
and that police would have the authority to commandeer any vehicle or
building that could be used for evacuation or shelter.
Tina and Bryan Steven of Forest Lake, Minnesota, sat glumly on a sidewalk on
Sunday morning outside their hotel in the French Quarter.
"We're choosing the best of two evils," Bryan Steven said. "It's either be
stuck in the hotel or stuck on the road."
Storm surges of up to 8.4 meters topped by waves up to 9 meters are possible
in some areas, hurricane center meteorologist Chris Sisko said. As much as
38cm of rain is possible.
Only three Category 5 hurricanes - the highest on the Saffir-Simpson scale -
have hit the United States since record-keeping began. The last was 1992's
Hurricane Andrew, which leveled parts of South Florida, killed 43 people and
caused $31 billion in damage. The others were the 1935 Labor Day hurricane
that hit the Florida Keys and killed 600 people and Hurricane Camille, which
devastated the Mississippi coast in 1969, killing 256.
Coastal evacuations
Katrina's landfall could still come in Mississippi and affect Alabama and
Florida, but it looked likely to come ashore Monday morning on the
southeastern Louisiana coast, said Ed Rappaport, deputy director of the
hurricane center in Miami. That put New Orleans squarely in the crosshairs.
"If it came ashore with the intensity it has now and went to the New Orleans
area, it would be the strongest we've had in recorded history there,"
Rappaport said in a telephone interview Sunday morning.
Mandatory evacuations were ordered all along the Mississippi coast, where
casinos were closed Sunday.
National Guard units had already been deployed, state officials said.
Katrina has been blamed for nine deaths in South Florida.
It was the sixth hurricane to hit Florida in just over a year.
The Associated Press
By
You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/15A833AE-53B5-4275-8C96-7943524D8F0B.htm
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