Katrina batters roof of Superdome
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NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- Hurricane Katrina flogged Louisiana's southeastern shore Monday morning with sustained winds in excess of 135 mph as it moved inland, the National Hurricane Center said.
New Orleans, braced for a catastrophic direct hit from the powerful Category 4 storm, hunkered nearly 10,000 people in its mammoth Superdome, but Ed Reams of CNN affiliate WDSU reported that the structure has begun leaking as the winds damaged the roof letting daylight and rainwater in the darkened arena.
"I can see daylight straight up from inside the Superdome," Reams reported.
National Guard troops moved people to the other side of the dome. Others were moving beneath the concrete-reinforced terrace level.
"This is only going to get bigger," he said. "We have another two hours before the worst of the storm gets to us."
City officials estimated that 1 million people had evacuated the area as the storm approached.
About 70 percent of New Orleans is below sea level and is protected from the Mississippi River by a series of levees. (Full story)
Forecasters predicted the storm surge could reach 28 feet; the highest levees around New Orleans are 18 feet high.
At 9 a.m. ET, the storm was centered about 40 miles southeast of New Orleans, Louisiana, and 65 miles southwest of Biloxi, Mississippi. (Watch video update on Katrina's path)
Hurricane force winds extended about 125 miles from the storm's center.
The storm was moving toward the north at 15 mph.
Hurricane Katrina made landfall Monday between Grand Isle, Louisiana, and the mouth of the Mississippi River -- and the worst is yet to come, National Hurricane Center forecaster Richard Knabb told CNN.
Katrina jogged to the north in the night, early enough to push the massive storm just off what had been a direct line to New Orleans, moving its eastern eye wall instead toward Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi, where CNN's Gary Tuchman found a boat washed onto a normally busy street.
"This is not the strongest part of the hurricane yet," Tuchman reported, battling the wind outside his truck. "This is the street where this boat is now. It's completely flooded. It's only going to get worse."
The counterclockwise spin of a hurricane makes the worst damage on its eastern edge, but CNN meteorologist Chad Myers cautioned that "there's not really an easy side of a Category 4 storm" on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
The Hurricane Center said that a 113 mph wind gust was reported in Pascagoula, Mississippi. (Watch video report from Biloxi, Mississippi)
In Biloxi, CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano reported that wind gusts topping 100 mph were starting to pull the roofs off of nearby buildings.
Hurricane warnings are posted from Morgan City, Louisiana, eastward to the Alabama-Florida state line, including New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. This means winds of at least 74 mph are expected in the warning area within the next 24 hours.
A tropical storm warning and a hurricane watch are in effect from the Alabama-Florida state line eastward to Destin, Florida, and from west of Morgan City to Intracoastal City, Louisiana. A tropical storm warning is also in effect from Intracoastal City, Louisiana, west to Cameron, Louisiana, and from Destin, Florida, eastward to Indian Pass, Florida.
A tropical storm warning means tropical storm conditions, including winds of at least 39 mph, are expected within 24 hours. A hurricane watch means hurricane conditions are possible, usually within 36 hours.
Isolated tornadoes are also possible Monday across southern portions of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, forecasters said.
Three deaths in New Orleans
Three residents of a New Orleans nursing home died Sunday while being evacuated to Baton Rouge, said Don Moreau, chief of operations for the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office.
The 23 residents were supposed to stay at a church, where one of the bodies was found. The other body was found on a school bus and a third person died at a hospital, Moreau said.
The others were found to be suffering from various forms of dehydration and exhaustion, he said.
Moreau did not know whether authorities would term the deaths storm-related. "These people are very fragile," he said. "When they're loaded up on a school bus and transported out of New Orleans ..."
One person died in similar circumstances during evacuations from Hurricane Ivan, he said.
Katrina is blamed for at least seven deaths in Florida, where it made landfall Thursday as a Category 1 hurricane. As much as 18 inches of rain fell in some areas, flooding streets and homes.
Category 5 is the most intense on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Only three Category 5 hurricanes have made landfall in the United States since records were kept. Those were the Labor Day hurricane of 1935, 1969's Hurricane Camille and Hurricane Andrew, which devastated the Miami area in 1992. Andrew remains the costliest U.S. hurricane on record, with $26.5 billion in losses.
Camille came ashore in Mississippi and killed 256 people.
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they were saying on the news last night, they weren't sure if the superdome could take the battering, this is after 1000's of people were being pushed inside...