New Orleans flees monster hurricane

NEW ORLEANS — With a Category 5 hurricane bearing down on his below-sea-level city, Mayor C. Ray Nagin made what pleas he could to his fellow citizens to flee and then left it in the hands of a higher power.

"God bless us," a grim Nagin said Sunday as Hurricane Katrina's 160 mph winds swirled on a seemingly irreversible course toward the Big Easy.

Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation for the city's 485,000 residents and opened the Superdome as a shelter of last resort, bluntly warning those who stayed that they would be at the mercy of Katrina's high winds, 28-foot storm surge and 15 inches of rain that threatened to overwhelm the city's protective levees.

"We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared," Nagin said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."

Katrina intensified into a Category 5 giant over the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico, reaching top winds of 175 mph before weakening slightly on a path to hit New Orleans around sunrise today. That would make it the city's first direct hit in 40 years and the most powerful storm ever to slam the city.

Forecasters warned that Mississippi and Alabama were also in danger because Katrina was such a big storm — with hurricane-force winds extending up to 105 miles from the center — that even areas far from the landfall could be devastated.

Even as the eye of the hurricane was still more than 100 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River, Grand Isle was recording sustained winds of nearly 44 mph and gusts up to 55 mph.

"The conditions have to be absolutely perfect to have a hurricane become this strong," said National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield, noting that Katrina may yet be more powerful than 1992's Hurricane Andrew. Andrew, with winds of 165 mph, leveled parts of South Florida, killed 43 people and caused $31 billion in damage.

"It's capable of causing catastrophic damage," Mayfield said. "Even well-built structures will have tremendous damage. Of course, what we're really worried about is the loss of lives.

"New Orleans may never be the same."

For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare flooding that a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl-shaped city bounded by the half-mile-wide Mississippi River and massive Lake Pontchartrain. As much as 10 feet below sea level in spots, the city is as the mercy of a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry.