"This Is Our Tsunami"

Well, if it's it any consolation, the death toll from Hurricane Katrina will probably be lower than from 1969's Hurricane Camille, if only because Katrina struck in the day, as opposed to nighttime Camille. But maybe I speak too soon - they can't even get into some of these places yet. Starting the survey in New Orleans:

Little islands of red ants floated in the gasoline-fouled waters through downtown. The Hyatt Hotel and other high-rise around the Superdome had rows and rows of shattered windows.

"We know that last night we had over 300 folks that we could confirm were on tops of roofs and waiting for our assistance. We pushed hard all throughout the night. We hoisted over 100 folks last night just in the Mississippi area. Our crews over New Orleans probably did twice that," Capt. Dave Callahan of the Coast Guard Aviation Training Center in Mississippi said on ABC.

National Guardsmen brought in people from outlying areas to the Superdome in the backs of big 2 1/2-ton Army trucks. Louisiana's wildlife enforcement department also brought people in on the backs of their pickups. Some were wet, some were in wheelchairs, some were holding babies and nothing else.

... Late Monday, Harrison County emergency operations center spokesman Jim Pollard said about 50 people had died in the county, with some 30 of the dead at a beach-side apartment complex in Biloxi.

Aargghh! History repeats itself! This kind of hurricane "party" is exactly what killed so many people in 1969 with Hurricane Camille! Continuing....

Three other people were killed by falling trees in Mississippi and two died in a traffic accident in Alabama, authorities said.

In Louisiana, Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security chief, said bodies were seen floating in the floodwaters in the hardest-hit areas. He could not give an estimate of deaths as of Tuesday morning, but said he believed the death toll would not be as great as some of the images of devastation would suggest.

... "This is our tsunami," Mayor A. J. Holloway of Biloxi, Miss., told The Biloxi Sun Herald.

Teresa Kavanagh, 35, of Biloxi, shook her head is disbelief as she took photographs of the damage in her hometown.

"Total devastation. Apartment complexes are wiped clean. We're going to rebuild, but it's going to take long time. Houses that withstood Camille are nothing but slab now," she said. Hurricane Camille killed 256 people in Louisiana and Mississippi in 1969.

... The hurricane knocked out power to more than 1 million people from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle, and authorities said it could be two months before electricity is restored to everyone. Katrina also disrupted petroleum output in the very center of the U.S. oil refining industry and rattled energy markets.

... Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said on CBS that it will be "quite awhile" before those displaced by the hurricane can return, particularly in areas close to downtown New Orleans. In some places, "it's going to be weeks at least before people can get back."

And once the floodwaters go down, "it's going to be incredibly dangerous" because of structural damage to homes, diseases from animal carcasses and chemicals in homes, Brown said.

... Mike Spencer of Gulfport made the mistake of trying to ride out the storm in his house. He told NBC that he used his grandson's little surfboard to make his way around the house as the water rose around him.

Finally, he said, "as the house just filled up with water, it forced me into the attic, and then I ended up kicking out the wall and climbing up to a tree because the houses around me were just disappearing."

He said he wrapped himself around a tree branch and waited four or five hours.
Anne Anderson said she lost her family home in Gulfport.

"My family's an old Mississippi family. I had antiques, 150 years old or more, they're all gone. We have just basically a slab," she told NBC. She added: "Behind us we have a beautiful sunrise and sunset, and that is going to be what I'm going to miss the most, sitting on the porch watching those."