New Orleans Copes With Tragedy as Monster Storms Weakens, Swirls Northbound

Army engineers raced to staunch rising floodwaters submerging historic New Orleans as helicopters plucked frantic survivors from rooftops and hundreds were feared dead on Tuesday after Hurricane Katrina tore across the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Authorities made plans to remove thousands of storm refugees from the Superdome stadium and other shelters in New Orleans and forged a bold scheme to airdrop giant sandbags to plug breaches in the city´s protective levee system as water from Lake Pontchartrain poured into the city.

Looters struck, adding to the city´s misery. They waded through flood water to ransack electronics stores, drugstores and supermarkets. They rolled carts full of merchandise and carried bundles and boxes of beer from downtown stores.

The economic cost of the hurricane could be the highest in U.S. history, as much as $26 billion, according to risk analysts´ estimates.

As New Orleans coped with a flood, Mississippi grappled with the prospect that hundreds of people may have died when a 30-foot (9 meter) storm surge blasted ashore, a city spokesman said. Cadaver dogs were being brought in to help find the dead.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said there were reports of up to 80 dead in the Biloxi area, but U.S.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco urged residents to hold a day of prayer on Wednesday to "calm our spirits" and give thanks for survival. "The situation is untenable," she said. "It´s just heartbreaking."

New Orleans is a bowl-like city mostly below sea level and protected by levees or embankments. The levees gave way overnight in at least three places, including a 200-foot (60 meter) breach that allowed the lake waters to pour into the city center.

The U.S. military planned to use helicopters to drop 3,000-pound gravel-filled sandbags into the breaches, the worst up to 20 feet (6 meter) deep. Authorities were also considering plugging the gap with shipping containers filled with sand.

Most of the deaths appear to have been caused by the storm surge, which swept as far as a mile inland in parts of Mississippi.

Before striking the Gulf Coast, Katrina last week hit southern Florida and killed seven people.