Eye Witness: Just as New Orleans thought the worst was over, the levee burst, flooding the city, writes Jamie Wilson in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The people who stayed in New Orleans to ride out Hurricane Katrina must have thought the worst was over.
After 160kph winds battered the city on Sunday night and Monday morning, the skies had cleared and, as dawn broke yesterday, the sun was shining for the first time in days.
But for some the nightmare was just beginning. A levee that had kept back the worst of the floodwater had broken. Millions of gallons of water from the 17th Street canal began to flow into the city.
As the level began to rise people scrambled for safety, some on to the roofs of their houses, while others clung to whatever they could find. Hundreds had already been rescued by boat and helicopter, but suddenly hundreds, possibly thousands more, needed rescuing.
Television pictures from helicopters flying overhead showed people standing on roofs, waving to get attention. Stories began to emerge of survivors and victims, and the twists of luck that determined who fell into which camp.
As is often the case, the poorest and most vulnerable members of the community, such as the elderly and the sick, were worst hit. One of the areas that has seen the worst flooding, the Ninth Ward, is a poor district to the east of the city's famous French Quarter.
Frank Mills was in a boarding house with three elderly residents when water started swirling up to the ceiling. As they made for the front door, one man went to his bedroom to retrieve something and a woman went to help him. "And when I saw her in the hallway, she was floating face up," Mr Mills told Associated Press. He never saw the man again.
Mr Mills made it to the roof over the front porch from where he tried to save another elderly man. "He was kind of on the edge of the roof, catching his breath. The next thing I knew he came floating past me . . . I don't know if he drowned or had a heart attack." After two hours on the roof he was rescued by a boat.
Bridgette Medley, her husband and daughter (3) sought shelter at a downtown hotel, but her brothers and sisters and parents decided to ride out the storms in their home in the Eighth Ward, a district of thin wooden houses, railway tracks and industrial canals on the city's east side.
By 7am on Monday, as the water started rising, Mrs Medley's siblings and parents pulled down the stairs to the attic and climbed up.
At 7.57am, Mrs Medley's sister, Stephany Johnson (48) managed to get through on her mobile phone. "She was panicking," Mrs Medley told the Los Angeles Times. "The water was up to their ankles in the house and rising fast - in a house that is five feet off the ground to start.
"She said, 'I love you'," said Mrs Medley. "And then she said, 'We're going to die'." At 6pm, the sisters managed to contact the National Guard who agreed to send a boat. They were going to be saved.
Many others were not so lucky. There was no official estimate of the death toll in the city yesterday, but one state official said: "The numbers are going to be big. When they drain the water out they're going to find that a lot of older people could not get out when the evacuation was ordered and couldn't get to their attics.
"And then there are going to be a lot of people who did get to their attics but did not take an axe with them . . ."
For the hundreds of rescue workers who had been gathering on the edges of the hurricane zone for days, the operation became farcical and frustrating. Dozens of boats from the wildlife and parks service were parked in a line on Interstate 10, the main route into New Orleans. They had nowhere to go.
"You know you keep hearing how New Orleans is like a bowl?" a rescue worker said. "Well, what we have here is a series of puddles and while we can get boats into the first puddle, we can't get them across to the next, which is where we need to be." Mayor Ray Nagin estimated that about 80 per cent of the city's 480,000 residents had heeded the mandatory evacuation order; that left 50,000 who, for various reasons, had elected to ride out the storm.
As many as 30,000 made their way to the once golden-roofed stadium in the city centre - most of the gold membrane was ripped off by Katrina. Many were last night preparing to spend a third night in the seats. The air conditioning was off, the carpets were soggy and anxiety was rising. There were even reports of a suicide.
"Everybody wants to go see their house. We want to know what's happened to us. It's hot, it's miserable and, on top of that, you're worried about your house," said Rosetta Junne (37).
Baton Rouge, a small city about 80 miles northwest of New Orleans, has been jammed with people fleeing the hurricane. Every hotel room has been full but queues were still forming outside some yesterday.
Federal authorities were preparing to build a massive tent city in the town.