Katrina: the aftermath

It sounds aweful.

• With winds up to 145 miles an hour, Katrina hit land in eastern Louisiana just after 6 a.m. Monday as a Category 4 storm, the second-highest rating, qualifying it as one of the strongest to strike the United States.

• New Orleans is but one city devasted by Katrina. It has left its mark on numerous Gulf Coast communities. In Mississippi, for example, Gulfport was virtually gone, and Biloxi was severely damaged. The president of Plaquemines Parish, on the southeastern tip of Louisiana, announced that the lower half of the parish had been reclaimed by the river. St. Bernard Parish, adjacent to New Orleans, was largely rooftops and water. In South Diamondhead, Miss., on St. Louis Bay, all that remained of the entire community of 200 homes was pilings. Boats were stuck in trees.

• The American Red Cross: "We are looking now at a disaster above any magnitude that we've seen in the United States. We've been saying that the response is going to be the largest Red Cross response in the history of the organization."

• The mayor [of New Orleans] estimated it would be one to two weeks before the water could be pumped out, and two to four weeks before Jason and other evacuees will be permitted to return to the city. Another city official said it would be two months before the schools reopened.

• New Orleans is below sea level, and the mayor estimated that 80 percent of the city was submerged, with the waters running as deep as 20 feet in some places. Floodwaters were still rising as much as three inches an hour in parts of New Orleans late Tuesday.

• The [New Orleans] city government has moved to Baton Rouge, 80 miles to the northwest.

• The looting is so bad that officials in Plaquemines and Jefferson Parishes have been calling for martial law, which is not authorized by the State Constitution.

• Preliminary damage estimates from insurance experts on Monday ranged from $9 billion to $16 billion, but they were pushed up past $25 billion on Tuesday, which could make Hurricane Katrina the costliest in history, surpassing Hurricane Andrew in 1992, with $21 billion in insured losses.
  

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