NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Hurricane Katrina plowed into this below-sea-level city Monday with howling, 145-mph winds and blinding rain that flooded some homes to the ceilings and peeled away part of the roof of the Superdome, where thousands of people had taken shelter.
Katrina weakened overnight to a Category 4 storm and turned slightly eastward before hitting land at 6:10 a.m. CDT near the bayou town of Buras, apparently sparing this vulnerable city from the storm's full fury.
But National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield warned that New Orleans would be pounded throughout the day and that Katrina's potential 15-foot storm surge, down from a feared 28 feet, was still substantial enough to cause extensive flooding.
"I'm not doing too good right now," Chris Robinson said via cellphone from his home east of the city's downtown. "The water's rising pretty fast. I got a hammer and an ax and a crowbar, but I'm holding off on breaking through the roof until the last minute. Tell someone to come get me please. I want to live." (sorry pal, but here's your Darwin Award)
Elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, the storm flung boats onto land in Mississippi, lashed street lamps and flooded roads in Alabama, and swamped highway bridges in the Florida Panhandle. At least half a million people were without power from Louisiana to Florida's Panhandle, including 370,000 in southeastern Louisiana and 116,400 in Alabama, mostly in the Mobile area.
At New Orleans' Superdome, home to 9,000 storm refugees, wind peeled pieces of metal from the roof, leaving two holes that let water drip in. People inside were moved out of the way. Others stayed and watched as sheets of metal flapped and rumbled loudly 19 stories above the floor.
Building manager Doug Thornton said the larger hole was 15 to 20 feet long and four to five feet wide. Outside, one of the 10-foot, concrete clock pylons set up around the Superdome blew over.
"The Superdome is not in any dangerous situation," Gov. Kathleen Blanco said.
In suburban Jefferson Parish, Sheriff Harry Lee said residents of a building on the west bank of the Mississippi River called 911 to say the building had collapsed and people might be trapped. He said deputies were not immediately able to check out the building because their vehicles were unable to reach the scene.
Scores of windows were blown out at some of New Orleans' hotels. At the Windsor Court Hotel, guests were told to go into the interior hallways with blankets and pillows and to keep the doors closed to the rooms to avoid flying glass.
At 11 a.m. EDT, Katrina was centered 35 miles northeast of New Orleans, moving to the north at 16 mph. The storm's winds dropped to 125 mph - a Category 3 storm - as it pushed inland, threatening the Gulf Coast and the Tennessee Valley with as much as 15 inches of rain over the next couple of days and up to 8 inches in the drought-stricken Ohio Valley and eastern Great Lakes.
Katrina was a terrifying, 175-mph Category 5 behemoth - the most powerful category on the scale - before weakening.
Mayfield said at midmorning the worst flooding from storm surge was on the Mississippi coast, east of the eye, with the highest storm surge recorded so far at 22 feet in Bay St. Louis.
Along U.S. 90 in Mississippi, the major coastal route that is home to the state's casinos, sailboats were washed onto the four-lane highway.
"This is a devastating hit - we've got boats that have gone into buildings," Gulfport Fire Chief Pat Sullivan said as he maneuvered around downed trees in the city. "What you're looking at is Camille II."
Forecasters predicted that the worst-hit areas in Mississippi would be about a 15-mile stretch of coast including Waveland, Bay St. Louis, and Pass Christian. The last time that area was hit by such a severe storm was in 1969 when the Category Five Hurricane Camille devastated the region, killing 256 people in Mississippi and Louisiana.
In Gulf Shores, Ala., which nearly a year ago was Ground Zero for Hurricane Ivan's destruction, waves crashed over the seawalls and street lights danced in the howling winds.
In New Orleans' French Quarter, water pooled in the streets from the driving rain, but the city appeared to have escaped the catastrophic flooding that forecasters had predicted.
On historic Jackson Square, two massive oak trees outside the 278-year-old St. Louis Cathedral came out by the roots, ripping out a 30-foot section of ornamental iron fence and straddling a marble statue of Jesus Christ, snapping off only the thumb and forefinger of his outstretched hand.
At the hotel Le Richelieu, the winds blew open sets of balcony french doors shortly after dawn. Seventy-three-year-old Josephine Elow of New Orleans pressed her weight against the broken doors as a hotel employee tried to secure them.
"It's not life-threatening," Mrs. Elow said as rain water dripped from her face. "God's got our back."
Elow's daughter, Darcel Elow, was awakened before dawn by a high-pitched howling that sounded like a trumpeting elephant.
"I thought it was the horn to tell everybody to leave out the hotel," she said as she walked the hall in her nightgown.
For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare scenario a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl of a city that is up to 10 feet below sea level in spots and relies on a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry from the Mississippi River on one side, Lake Pontchartrain on the other.
The fear was that flooding could overrun the levees and turn New Orleans into a toxic lake filled with chemicals and petroleum from refineries, as well as waste from ruined septic systems.
In the uptown area of New Orleans on the south shore of Lake Ponchartrain, floodwaters by 8 a.m. had already intruded on the first stories of some houses and some roads were impassable.
The National Weather Service reported that a levee broke on the Industrial Canal near the St. Bernard-Orleans parish line, and 3 to 8 feet of flooding was possible. The Industrial Canal is a 5.5-mile waterway that connects the Mississippi River to the Intracoastal Waterway.
Crude oil futures spiked to more than $70 a barrel in Singapore for the first time Monday as Katrina targeted an area crucial to the country's energy infrastructure, but the price had slipped back to $68.95 by midday in Europe. The storm already forced the shutdown of an estimated 1 million barrels of refining capacity.
Terry Ebbert, New Orleans director of homeland security, said more than 4,000 National Guardsmen were mobilizing in Memphis and would help police New Orleans streets.
Calling it a once-in-a-lifetime storm, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had ordred a mandatory evacuation for the 480,000 residents of the vulnerable city, and he estimated about 80 percent heeded the call.
The evacuation itself claimed lives. Three New Orleans nursing home residents died Sunday after being taken by bus to a Baton Rouge church. Don Moreau, of the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office, said the cause was probably dehydration.
Katrina, which cut across Florida last week, had intensified into a Category 5 over the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico, reaching top winds of 175 mph before weakening as it neared the coast.
New Orleans has not taken a direct hit from a hurricane since Betsy in 1965, when an 8- to 10-foot storm surge submerged parts of the city in seven feet of water. Betsy, a Category 3 storm, was blamed for 74 deaths in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.
Katrina hit the southern tip of Florida as a much weaker storm Thursday and was lamed for nine deaths. It left miles of streets and homes flooded and knocked out power to 1.45 million customers. It was the sixth hurricane to hit Florida in just over a year
