More on New Orleans:



The situation looks like it will get worse before it gets better.

As federal emergency management teams reached the area, officials contended with widespread breakdowns in public service. Water plants failed and sewers overflowed. Gas lines ruptured and hospitals shut down. Fuel supplies dwindled.

Katrina's human toll presented the most pressing needs. Even the dead had to wait while search teams aided the living. "We're not even dealing with bodies," Nagin said. Searchers were “just pushing them on the side.”

Came across this graphic which explains exactly what is happening in the city.

It is going to be 90° plus in the city today.

The stench inside the Louisiana Superdome was the worst of it.

It was the smell of refugees who hadn't bathed in days in a facility where the bathrooms were filthy, bins were stuffed with trash and 20,000 people were cooped up with no place to go.

The roof had holes in it, and dozens of people spent the night on the concourse outside the stadium for the coolness — such as it was — and more important, a breath of fresh air. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the air conditioning had been off since Monday. Three displaced hospital patients died in the dome.

The Army Corps. of Engineers doesn’t expect the problem to subside soon.

Once the breaches are closed and all of the pumps are running, the pumps can lower the water level ½ inch per hour or about a foot per day. We can get the water level to sea level in four and a half days. The ½ inch rate assumes the late is at normal levels. That would create pumping inefficiency, as could trash in drains and canals that feed into the pump stations.
That’s a “Best Case” scenario. We don’t know the conditions of all of the pumps. Fortunately most of the pump motors and controllers are at an elevation greater than 5 feet and we hope they weren’t submerged. There could be other unforeseen problems.