Floods Ravage New Orleans

Document View: "Copyright The Washington Post Company Aug 31, 2005
Two levees burst Tuesday, flooding the city of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which had already leveled much of the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Alabama in one of the nation's worst natural disasters.
The flooding showed that the damage from the historic hurricane that hit early Monday with 145-mph winds was only just beginning. Rescuers in boats pushed aside the dead floating in the brown, churning waves to reach survivors trapped on rooftops as authorities urged residents to flee.
While Katrina flooded the bowl that is New Orleans, its winds and 25-foot storm surge killed an estimated 110 people in Mississippi. An oil platform, torn from its moorings in the Gulf, beached near Dauphin Island, Ala. The devastation stretched across three states, with the hurricane shredding waterfront hotels, toppling concrete bridges and injuring countless people.
Communication was sporadic or nonexistent. Nearly 3 million people were without electricity and drinking water. Interstates across Lake Pontchartrain were battered, buckled and broken, and most other roads also were impassable more than a day after Katrina had passed by as a Category 4 hurricane -- one of the strongest ever to hit the continental United States."