First Death Toll From Katrinas' Fury

Katrina kills at

least 55

RAW STORY


Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast with devastating force at daybreak on Monday, sparing New Orleans the catastrophic hit that had been feared but inundating parts of the city and heaping damage on neighboring Mississippi, where it tossed boats, ripped away scores of roofs and left many of the major coastal roadways impassable, the New York Times will report in Wednesday editions... Early edition:

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Packing 145-mile-an-hour winds as it made landfall, the storm left more than a million people in three states without power and submerged highways even hundreds of miles from its center.

Officials reported at least 55 deaths, with 50 alone in Harrison County, Miss., which includes Gulfport and Biloxi. Emergency workers feared that they would find more dead among people believed to be trapped underwater and in collapsed buildings.

Jim Pollard, a spokesman for the Harrison County emergency operations center, said a number of people were found dead in an apartment complex in Biloxi. Seven others were found in the Industrial Seaway, a canal that runs from the Gulf to the Back Bay.

Hurricane Katrina was potent enough to rank as one of the most punishing hurricanes ever to hit the United States. Insurance experts said that damage could exceed $9 billion, which would make it one of the costliest storms on record.

In New Orleans, most of the levees held, but one was damaged. Flood waters rose to rooftops in one neighborhood. The hurricane's howling winds stripped 15-foot sections off the roof of the Superdome, where as many as 10,000 evacuees were sheltered.