Indonesian families travel 18 hours to escape Katrina
Indonesian families travel 18 hours to escape Katrina
Agencies, New York/Biloxi, Mississippi
Hurricane Katrina forced three Indonesian families in New Orleans to travel for 18 hours for shelter at the Indonesian Consulate in Houston, Texas, as floodwaters poured into low-lying New Orleans and more than 50 people were reported dead in Mississippi.
Spokesman for the consulate, Rusman Utomo, said the New Orleans-Houston trip usually took only four hours, but in this particular week, the families had to race with the crowds of residents rushing out of the city, known as the birthplace of jazz.
"Ten people from three families traveled for 18 hours to come to the consulate. They arrived early on Monday," Rusman told Antara on Tuesday. "They thought of coming here after they learned that hotels in the cities neighboring New Orleans were fully booked."
There have been no reports of Indonesian casualties among some 300 Indonesian nationals living in New Orleans city in Louisiana, he added. They are mostly students or employees at U.S. companies like PT Freeport mining company. The company also has an exploration unit in Papua province.
"Before the hurricane arrived, most of them had taken refugee outside the town, either in hotels or with relatives and friends," Rusman said. He praised the U.S. government for its quick response before the disaster arrived.
Meanwhile, the death toll across Mississippi was expected to rise as rescuers struggled through high water and mountains of debris to reach devastated areas.
The killer storm inflicted catastrophic damage all along the coast as it slammed into Louisiana with 224 kilometers per hour winds, then swept across Mississippi, Alabama and western Florida.
It left a trail of shattered buildings, broken boats, smashed cars, toppled trees and flooded cities. Risk analysts estimated the storm would cost US$26 billion, the highest in U.S. history.
The storm brought back memories of Hurricane Camille, which hit the region in 1969 with winds up to 320 kph and killed 256 people. Before striking the Gulf coast, Katrina hit southern Florida last week, where it killed seven people.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said bodies were floating in high waters that covered most of the city.
"My heart is heavy tonight. I don't have any good news to really share," he told television station WWL.
New Orleans is mostly below sea level and protected by levees or embankments.
Nagin said the levees had given way in places to Katrina's storm surge, including a 60-meter breach near the city center through which waters from Lake Pontchartrain were pouring in.
So far, Nagin said, the historic French Quarter and central business district had not been badly flooded.
Katrina knocked out electricity to about 1.3 million people, in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, utility companies said. Restoring power could take weeks, they warned.
On its way to the coast, the storm swept through oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico where 20 percent of the nation's energy is produced.