Fear flows along with the waters

Mayor: Toll may be in the thousands

This story was reported by KATIE THOMAS in Baton Rouge, La., CYNTHIA DANIELS in Biloxi, Miss., TIMOTHY M. PHELPS in Washington and TINA SUSMAN in New York | It was written by Susman and supplemented with wire reports.

September 1, 2005

New Orleans' mayor warned that thousands could be dead in the submerged city yesterday as fetid floodwaters continued to ooze through the streets and rescue workers adopted drastic measures to handle Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, which was proving as disastrous as the storm itself.

From Louisiana through Alabama, or more than 100 miles along the Gulf Coast, survivors of Monday's storm faced staggering obstacles: scarce food, no clean water, no gas, dead phone lines, no electricity and, in some places, rampant looting. Compounding the misery were extreme heat and humidity, the stench of decaying bodies and the realization that it would be months before some places were again habitable.

"New Orleans as we know it does not exist," said Mark Smith of Louisiana's Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness. President George W. Bush predicted recovery would take years.

Smith's agency was ferrying sick and injured people to Baton Rouge as the situation in New Orleans, 70 miles away, deteriorated. About 80 percent of the city was flooded. Thousands of people awaited rescue, waving flags from rooftops, balconies and floating cars at helicopters thundering overhead.

Every mound of dry concrete became an oasis from the snake- and trash-infested waters, which began pouring in Tuesday after levees protecting New Orleans from surrounding waterways were breached. Those who weren't picked up by helicopters and deposited on dry patches made their own way on air mattresses, in giant rubber tubs or by wading.

"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and other people dead in attics, Mayor Ray Nagin said. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

Nagin said there was no option but a "total evacuation of the city. We have to. The city will not be functional for two or three months."

That's if an unprecedented airdrop of 15,000-pound sandbags, which Army engineers hoped to begin last night, can plug the levees. Only after the holes are plugged can the city pump water back out, a process expected to take several weeks.

Thousands of people who had taken refuge in the Superdome were to be bused to Houston's Astrodome because of flooding and squalid conditions in the New Orleans stadium. The Federal Emergency Management Agency was also considering housing people in mobile home parks, tent cities and on cruise ships.

About 100 miles to the east on Mississippi's once-glitzy casino-dotted coast, where Katrina hit hardest, teams slogged through mud and thick sand to hunt for bodies and survivors.

In devastated Biloxi, waves washed silently ashore as a 12-vehicle caravan approached the crumbled remains of the Tivoli Hotel. A 27-member team, accompanied by a search dog named Ranger, jumped out. "We're looking for live bodies only," said team leader Joe Boney.

A yellow flag poking out of the bricks, as did a hearse idling nearby, indicated that a dead body lay below.

After canvassing the area, a team member used orange spray paint to scrawl the date and a square with a slash through it on a slab of concrete - the sign that no new bodies had been found. As for the one already there, Boney said it was covered in concrete and could not be removed right away.

Nearby, cars meandered down the highway while machines cleared sand and fallen trees. Many simply gawked at the fallen city, void of casinos and its historic antebellum homes. Beauvoir, the last home of Jefferson Davis, sat looking dejected, marble columns blocking its front walkway, windows busted and shutters broken off.

The death toll in Harrison County, which includes Biloxi and neighboring Gulfport, was changing by the minute, said Joe Spraggins, county civil defense director. He refused to give numbers, but officials have warned of hundreds.

For survivors, even those with enough money and advance planning to have gotten hotel rooms before the storm, the lasting devastation meant that they, too, might join tens of thousands in emergency shelters.

"I don't got nothing. Nothing." Anitra Bailey, a nursing home worker who had been staying in a $75-per-night hotel room in Baton Rouge since Sunday, said yesterday. While she said she understood the hotel's need to make money, Bailey added in frustration, "There should be some accommodation" for evacuees. "This is a tragedy."

Co-worker Deidre Richardson faced a similar plight, but she was also worried about her missing fiance, Bernard Williams. He had insisted on staying behind when she left New Orleans on Sunday and had not been heard from since.

"I can't wait until I can get back to find out" what happened to him, Richardson said as she scoured the hundreds of faces of sick and wounded survivors at the Louisiana State University fieldhouse in Baton Rouge.

With the disaster in its third day, Bush got his first view of the scene after returning early from vacation. Air Force One took a 35-minute flyover of the hurricane region. "It's devastating," he said while peering down. "It's got to be doubly devastating on the ground."

Later, Bush called a meeting of his cabinet to discuss the crisis and made a brief statement in the Rose Garden, calling the hurricane "one of the worst natural disasters in our nation's history."

He vowed that New Orleans and the other communities will be rebuilt.