Breakfast at Tiffany's – Because I Do Not Know

Katrina Comes Ashore

The destruction from Hurricane Katrina will probably be more fully grasped sometime in the morning. New Orleans was spared a direct hit, but damage is substantial.

For New Orleans -- a dangerously vulnerable city because it sits mostly below sea level in a bowl-shaped depression -- it was not the apocalyptic storm forecasters had feared.

But it was plenty bad, in New Orleans and elsewhere along the coast, where numerous people had to be rescued from rooftops and attics as the floodwaters rose around them.

At least five deaths were blamed on Katrina -- three people killed by falling trees in Mississippi and two killed in a traffic accident in Alabama. And an untold number of other people were feared dead in flooded neighborhoods, many of which could not be reached by rescuers because of high water.

"Some of them, it was their last night on Earth," Terry Ebbert, chief of homeland security for New Orleans, said of people who ignored orders to evacuate the city of 480,000 over the weekend. "That's a hard way to learn a lesson."

A friend of mine riding the storm out reports (through a third party; they've lost power and are running a generator) numerous windows blown out, and the Superdome -- where thousands were in a "place of last resort -- also suffered damage. Buildings downtown collapsed, and there are reports of hundreds trapped or stranded. The Quarter seems to be OK. Downtown, water was up to the tires on many cars. Heavy flooding in Treme and the Lower 9th Ward (both downtown neighborhoods). Lakeview and East New Orleans also are seeing high water. Reports say a levee didn't hold.

You can say New Orleans is lucky. And it is, compared to what could have happened. But, in reality, it's like saying to someone in a car wreck, "You're lucky. You only broke both your legs." Yet, New Orleans will walk again. It will just be very painful for awhile.

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