Katrina Brushes New Orleans

Hurricane Katrina turned slightly to the east before slamming ashore early Monday with 145-mph winds, providing some hope that the worst of the storm's wrath might not be directed at this vulnerable, below-sea-level city.

Two holes opened in the roof of the Superdome — pressed into service as an emergency shelter — as Katrina approached the city, reports CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan. The holes, about the 20-yard line, are rectangular, about 10 feet by 3 feet, and Cowan saw pieces of the roof flapping in the wind. Water also is leaking in several other spots all over the building.

Electricity also failed several hours earlier, triggering groans from the crowd. Emergency generators kicked in, but the backup power runs only reduced lighting and was not strong enough to run the air conditioning.

Overall, 370,000 Entergy customers were without power Monday morning as the hurricane made landfall.

"I'd rather watch this than watch a movie," said Steven Grades, 22, one of the Superdome evacuees as he looked out through the windows.

Katrina, which weakened slightly overnight to a Category 4 storm, turned slightly eastward before hitting land, which would put the western eyewall — the weaker side of the strongest winds — over New Orleans.

But National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield warned that New Orleans would be pounded throughout the day Monday and that Katrina's potential 20-foot storm surge was still more than capable of swamping the city.

A mandatory evacuation was declared Sunday for the New Orleans area.

"It was exactly the right thing for the mayor and governor to do," Federal Emergency Management Agency director Mike Brown told Early Show co-anchor Harry Smith.

Katrina, which a day before had grown to a 175-mph, Category 5 behemoth, made landfall about 6:10 a.m. CDT east of Grand Isle in the bayou town of Buras.

"The fact that it's staying to the east and the worst weather is even east of the center ... may allow this storm to sneak by New Orleans without the worst happening in the city," said CBS News Hurricane Analyst Bryan Norcross of CBS station WFOR.

The storm hammered the Gulf Coast with huge waves and tree-bending winds. Exploding transformers lit up the predawn sky in Mobile, Ala., while tree limbs littered roads and a blinding rain whipped up sand on the deserted beach of Gulfport, Miss.

"Our people are sturdy people, strong people. We've dealt with storms before," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco told CBS News Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm. "We know we're going to lose some property. There will be extensive damage but we will rebuild. We have confidence in ourselves and know we can restore property we can't restore lives."

Not everyone heeded the mandatory evacuation orders, though. Bruce Shreve of New Orleans was among those who stayed.

"I actually rethought it a little bit this morning. I thought, this may not have been the brightest move," he told The Early Show by telephone shortly after landfall. "We've done it before and it looks like the storm actually turned a little bit east and we're going to get a lot of wind. I think we're going to be OK."
President Bush issued rare "advance" emergency declarations for Louisiana and neighboring states, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Peter Maer, and federal agencies were moving relief supplies to areas closer to the storm zone. Thousands of national guard troops are at a staging center in Memphis. A nuclear power plant near New Orleans shut down and the government was monitoring two other facilities.

While gas prices usually peak in August, any major disruption to oil production facilities in the Gulf of Mexico caused by Hurricane Katrina could keep prices high even longer. Gasoline prices could see the largest spikes because so many refineries in the region could be shut down by flooding, power outages, or both, energy analysts said.

Oil hit $70 a barrel overnight in anticipation of Katrina. About a million dollars a day of oil production has been shot down, evacuating thousands of workers, reports CBS News Correspondent Susan McGinnis. Chevron, Texaco, BP and Mobil have all brought their workers ashore.

New Orleans is surrounded by water, reports Cowan, with massive Lake Pontchartrain on one side and the Mississippi River on the other, which means New Orleans has virtually no high ground.

If that water comes over the levees, the worry is the pumps will be under water and the only way to get it out would be to open the levees back up and let the water drain out. It could take anywhere between 10 days and two weeks before the water is completely out of the city.

After Katrina comes ashore, it will spread up the eastern part of the country, said Norcross.

Hundreds of thousands in the three states heeded official advice Sunday to evacuate, some heading to shelters and others clogging the roads as they tried to reach friends, relatives and motels on higher ground.

"I'm really scared," said Linda Young as she filled her gas tank near New Orleans. "I've been through hurricanes, but this one scares me. I think everybody needs to get out."

"We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said in ordering the mandatory evacuation for his city of 485,000 people, surrounded by suburbs of a million more. "The storm surge will most likely topple our levee system."

"This is very serious, of the highest nature," said Nagin. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."

Conceding that as many as 100,000 inner-city residents didn't have the means to leave and an untold number of tourists were stranded by the closing of the airport, the city arranged buses to take people to 10 last-resort shelters, including the Superdome.

First priority in the Superdome went to frail, elderly people on walkers, some with oxygen tanks. They were told to bring enough food, water and medicine to last up to five days.

In the French Quarter, most bars that stayed open through the threat of past hurricanes were boarded up and the few people on the streets were battening down their businesses and getting out.