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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (135138)	8/30/2005 7:47:31 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793544

Looks like the levee break is causing a real problem. New Orleans levee breaks Katrina's death toll at 65 NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- As the death toll from Hurricane Katrina reached at least 65, a levee holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain sustained a breach two blocks long overnight in the Lakefront area of New Orleans. The breach triggered rapidly rising floodwaters in the city's downtown and prompted at least one hospital to evacuate patients by air. The death toll was expected to climb from one of the most powerful hurricanes to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast in half a century. Fifty of the deaths occurred in one county in Mississippi, CNN confirmed. Eleven people died from Katrina's earlier strike on Florida. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin confirmed the breach in a local TV interview. City fire officials said the break was about 200 feet long in the levee surrounding the 17th Street Canal. "My heart is heavy tonight," Nagin said in the interview on WWL-TV. "I don't have any good news to share. "The city of New Orleans is in a state of devastation. We probably have 80 percent of our city underwater. With some sections of our city, the water is as deep as 20 feet." The state Department of Emergency Preparedness said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was holding a meeting on the breach. Karen Troyer Caraway, vice president of Tulane University Hospital, told CNN earlier that Louisiana State Police had confirmed the breach to her. A hospital across from Tulane, Charity Hospital, was evacuating its 90 patients by air, she said. The hospitals are in the city's central business district. Water at Tulane's hospital had been rising at the rate of a foot an hour, Caraway said, and had reached the top of the first floor. "It's dumping all the lake water in Orleans Parish," she said. "It's essentially running down Canal Street. We have whitecaps on Canal Street. "We now are completely surrounded by 6 feet of water and are about to get on the phone with Federal Emergency Management Agency to start talking about evacuation plans," Caraway said. "The water is rising so fast, I can't even begin to describe how fast it is rising." She did not know whether any pumps had been turned on to pump the water but said, "They're not going to be able to compete with Lake Pontchartrain." A system of levees and pumping stations usually protects the city, most of which sits below sea level. Tulane hospital had moved its emergency room to the second floor, she said. It has been on emergency generator power for the past 24 hours, but she said if water continued rising rapidly, it would swamp the power source and electricity would be lost. "We have patients on respirators," she said. There are more than 1,000 people in the hospital, and most of the patients are critically ill, meaning they would have to be evacuated by air, she said. Tulane hospital's command center later reported the rate of rising water had slowed to about an inch an hour, and an official there said evacuations at the hospital had been postponed. In the city's eastern portion, emergency workers were using boats to rescue people from the 9th Ward neighborhood, which was largely submerged after water topped a levee. A state official said at least 50 people had been rescued. Some residents said water rose so quickly they did not have time to grab their shoes before climbing to safety. (Watch video of a helicopter rescue) "We've got a massive search-and-rescue operation going on," Louisiana, Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco said. "I believe that we're going to pull out hundreds of people." cnn.com