Levee repair fixed as mayor predicts 10,000 deaths in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS, La. — A week after Hurricane Katrina, the levee break that caused much of the area's flooding was repaired, floodwaters began to recede and the mayor made his direst prediction yet: as many as 10,000 deaths in his city alone.

Louisiana officials said Monday afternoon that the repeated helicopter droppings of 30,000-pound sandbags into the football-field-wide break in the 17th Street canal leading to Lake Ponchartrain succeeded in stopping the water, and water was being pumped from the canal back into the lake. Some parts of the city showed slipping floodwaters as the repair neared completion, with some low-lying areas dropping more more than a foot.

"We're starting to make the kind of progress that I kind of expected earlier," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said even before the plug of the break, which opened up a day after the hurricane and flooded 80 percent of the city up to 20 feet deep.

The good news came as many of the 460,000 residents of suburban Jefferson Parish waited in a line of cars that stretched for miles to briefly see damaged caused by the same levee break, and to scoop up soaked wedding pictures, baby shoes and other cherished mementoes.

"A lot of these people built these houses anticipating some flood water but nobody imagined this," sobbed Diane Dempsey, a 59-year-old retired Army lieutenant colonel who could get no closer than the water line a mile from her Metairie home. "I'm going to pay someone to get me back there, anything I have to do."

"I won't be getting inside today unless I get some scuba gear," added Jack Rabito, a 61-year-old bar owner who waited for a ride to visit his one-story home that had water lapping to the gutters.

Katharine Dastugue was overjoyed to find that floodwaters had gone across her lawn but stopped just inches from her doorstep. As she stood waiting for a boat to take her in, she made a list of thing she hoped to salvage before being forced to leave again Wednesday.

"If I can just get my kids' baby photos," she said. "You can't replace those." flooding, and thousands of homes were damaged.

In New Orleans, Nagin upticked his estimate of the probable death toll in his city from merely thousands to telling NBC's "Today" show: "It wouldn't be unreasonable to have 10,000."

As law enforcement officers and even bands of private individuals — including actor Sean Penn — launched a door-to-door boat and air search of the city for survivors, they were running up against a familiar obstacle: People who had been trapped more than a week in damaged homes yet refused to leave.