![]() Though many thought the worst was over, New Orleans was in still more serious trouble. Highways were flooded for miles inland, power was out across the region, and hundreds of thousands of people were displaced. "We rode the house," Don Haller, of Diamondhead, said to The New York Times. In South Diamondhead, an entire subdivision of 200 homes was washed away. Wind and two-story storm surges obliterated many of Mississippi's seaside communities, such as Gulfport and Biloxi, as well. Bernard Parish, an estimated 40,000 homes were destroyed. This was hardly a reprieve: The storm hovered over the region for eight long hours, ripping houses apart with winds of up to 145 mph. When Katrina made landfall at 6 am the next morning, the hurricane had been downgraded to a Category 4. "If you don't have no money, you can't go." The city established emergency shelters-of-last-resort for anyone who remained, and some 10,000 people waited out the storm in the Louisiana Superdome Sunday night. "I know they're saying 'get out of town,' but I don't have any way to get out," said New Orleans resident Hattie Johns, 74, to the Gannett News Service. Greyhound and Amtrak cancelled service into and out of New Orleans on Sunday, and airlines grounded planes at New Orleans's Louis Armstrong airport. Estimates vary, but 26,000 to 100,000 New Orleans families did not own a car. Some officials argue that they stayed by choice, but reports on the ground suggest that many residents, and quite a few tourists, were simply stranded. Before Katrina hit, 80 percent of residents had already evacuated but an estimated 100,000 people remained. Highway lanes were converted to outbound traffic only, and state police estimated that 18,000 vehicles an hour were streaming away from the region by late afternoon. Ray Nagin of New Orleans issued a nonmandatory evacuation order by Sunday and, despite later misperceptions, most people left. National Hurricane Director Max Mayfield was so concerned about the potential consequences of Katrina that he called the mayor of New Orleans, the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi, and even President Bush at his ranch in Texas. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play Publications such as Scientific American, New Orleans's Times-Picayune, National Geographic Magazine and Popular Mechanics have all reported on the city's vulnerability in the event of a major hurricane. ![]() below sea level, between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, and is kept dry by a complicated system of canals, levees and pumping stations. But the likelihood of that happening has been well-known for years. In fact, the only outcome the 258-word alert didn't specifically foretell was the massive flooding that would leave most of New Orleans submerged under a fetid stew of water and chemical runoff. Residents should expect long-term power outages and water shortages that would "make human suffering incredible by modern standards." Commercial buildings would be unusable, and apartment buildings would be destroyed. perhaps longer," the weather service warned. ![]() ![]() The city would be "uninhabitable for weeks. 28, 2005, Hurricane Katrina had morphed from a relatively weak Category 1 hurricane to a Category 5 tropical monster - and was spiraling straight toward New Orleans. "DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED." By the time the National Weather Service issued this ominous alert on the morning of Aug. ![]()
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