Rain, tornado threat lingers as Gustav fades
09/02/2008
A driver eyes the damage from Hurricane Gustav at a gas station Monday in Houma, Louisiana.
NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana -- Officials warned Gulf Coast evacuees not to return home Tuesday to assess the damage from Hurricane Gustav, but it appeared that southern Louisiana's levees had passed their first test since Hurricane Katrina.
Two million people fled Gustav's advance under mandatory evacuation orders and with memories still fresh of Katrina, which flooded New Orleans and killed more than 1,800 people in 2005.New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin told evacuees on Tuesday morning to "hold tight for today.""We have over 50 percent of our citizens without power. Our sewer system is damaged and not operational. And our hospitals are still with skeletal crews. So we'll repair most of that today and tomorrow and start the process for re-entry thereafter," Nagin told CNN's "American Morning."Businesses will be allowed to return to the area Wednesday, the mayor said, "and then the latest, Thursday, we'll start our citizens to arrive."Nagin promised "an orderly process for re-entry."Gustav was reduced to tropical depression status early Tuesday, with top winds of 35 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.But another storm system was brewing in the Atlantic. The hurricane center said Tropical Storm Hanna could make landfall as a major hurricane somewhere on the Southeastern U.S. coast by Friday evening.Heavy rain and possible tornadoes remained threats to the Gulf Coast region Tuesday as Gustav, centered about 135 miles northwest of Lafayette, Louisiana, moved northwest at 10 mph, according to the hurricane center.Accumulations of 6 to 12 inches of rain were possible through Thursday over Louisiana, northeastern Texas, western Mississippi, Arkansas, southern Missouri and southeast Oklahoma, the center said.Seven deaths along the U.S. Gulf Coast were linked to Gustav, including four hospice patients who died during evacuations before the storm made landfall Monday.Gustav knocked over trees and power poles across the region and shut down power to nearly 780,000 customers in Louisiana and Mississippi. High water closed most of U.S. 90 in Mississippi and Louisiana, and winds sent whitecaps cascading over the levees in New Orleans.Baton Rouge, which sheltered many evacuees from New Orleans in 2005, was hit hard by Gustav."This is the most destruction in East Baton Rouge Parish in anyone's memory," said Walter Monsour, chief administrative officer for the parish, where power was out for everyone who didn't have a generator.Because of the high winds, repair crews may not get out until Wednesday, said Phil Allison, spokesman for power utility Entergy, which provides electricity for most of the area.In Plaquemines Parish, where the storm surge threatened a private levee holding a canal back from several residential areas, parish President Bill Nungesser said sandbagging efforts appeared to have been successful."We have stopped the bleeding, and I am very encouraged by what we are seeing," Nungesser said.Unsecured boats posed more of a problem than flooding in some areas. Five runaway barges were loose on the Mississippi River near St. Charles, officials said, and three vessels -- including two scrapped Navy boats -- broke away from their moorings in New Orleans' Industrial Canal.Those three vessels were stuck beneath a railroad bridge, where they were collecting debris, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said.The levee on the Industrial Canal was breached during Hurricane Katrina, causing devastating floods in the historic Lower 9th Ward and neighboring St. Bernard Parish. But Jindal said that the lowest areas of the Lower 9th were covered by only about 6 inches of water by late Monday afternoon.Gustav came ashore near Cocodrie, Louisiana -- about 80 miles southwest of New Orleans -- at midmorning Monday and then moved along the coast to the northwest, avoiding a direct hit on the Crescent City. Houma, Morgan City and other coastal cities took the brunt of the storm, and the extent of the damage in those areas won't be known until Tuesday.Gustav hammered Mississippi as the storm moved ashore to the west of New Orleans.In Pass Christian, Gustav blew vinyl siding off homes and damaged the recently repaired small-boat harbor. At least four boats docked there were swept onto the harbor access road, police Chief John Dubuisson said.In Biloxi, Mississippi, iReporter Kevin Wise, who lives two blocks from the beach, said Gustav had pushed Gulf waters over the highway, about 100 yards from the usual shoreline.In Baton Rouge, two people were killed when a tree fell on the house where they were staying after they had escaped the storm from the south, officials said. A falling tree also killed a 27-year-old man in Lafayette, officials said.Four other people from area hospices died in the backs of ambulances while awaiting airplanes to fly them out of the area, said Richard Zuschlag, chairman and CEO of Acadian Ambulance Service Inc., whose 250 vehicles provide 90 percent of the ambulance service for the area.But Zuschlag said there was no evidence that the wait for air service contributed to the deaths."If they didn't die on the ambulance, they would have died on the plane, because our medics did everything they could to keep them alive," he said. "When you move patients like that, you're going to have that kind of thing happen with an elderly population."Meanwhile, Hanna's future path and strength remained uncertain. It was downgraded from a hurricane to a tropical storm Tuesday morning. Hanna appeared to be in a "meandering" loop across the Turks and Caicos Islands, but the storm is expected to move northwest over the next few days and to gain strength before landfall, the hurricane center said.Farther east in the Atlantic, Tropical Storm Ike was lined up behind Hanna, and was expected to become a hurricane.
Discuss This Article
Add your comment below!
© 2008 expobusiness.com. All Rights Reserved.