New Orleans appeared to have escaped the worst of the havoc wreaked by Hurricane Katrina, but authorities were last night still trying to assess casualties and damage along large swaths of the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines after they were pummelled by devastating winds and potentially catastrophic flooding.
Officials said three people from a New Orleans nursing home had died during their evacuation to a Baton Rouge church.
Initial estimates put the hurricane damage at in excess of $25 billion. There were reports of people climbing into attics to escape rising water in the low-lying city, and witnesses described walls of water running down skyscrapers like waterfalls.
A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said last night there were no reports of any Irish people at risk from Hurricane Katrina.
Winds of 160kph punched holes in the golden roof of the Superdome Arena, peeling away metal sheets while more than 9,000 people who had been unable to leave the city watched helplessly from below.
But initial reports suggested storm surges had not significantly breached the levees protecting the city that in places lies up to three metres below sea level. However, experts warned that heavy rainfall over the Mississippi Delta in the next few days could cause catastrophic flash flooding.
Hundreds of thousands of people fled New Orleans or took shelter on higher ground after authorities ordered an unprecedented mandatory evacuation on Sunday morning. Some of those who were unable or unwilling to go appeared to be paying the price yesterday.
"I'm not doing too good right now," Chris Robinson told Associated Press via mobile phone from his home in the city.
"The water's rising pretty fast. I got a hammer and an axe and a crowbar, but I'm holding off on breaking through the roof."
Along the Gulf coast, 230kph winds hurled boats on to land in Mississippi, flooded roads in Alabama, and left 28,000 people without electricity in the Florida Panhandle. On the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain, entire neighbourhoods of one-storey wooden homes were flooded up to the roof.
Katrina had weakened from a category 5 - the most powerful hurricane on the scale - to a category 4 before hitting land at about 6.10am yesterday. The eye of the storm had earlier taken a small but significant turn to the east, directing the most extreme fury away from New Orleans. New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said he believed 80 per cent of the city's 485,000 residents had heeded his order to evacuate.