Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore early yesterday and charged toward this below-sea-level city with 233kph winds and the threat of a catastrophic storm surge.
Katrina edged slightly to the east shortly before making landfall near Grand Isle, providing some hope that the worst of the storm's wrath might not be directed at the vulnerable city.
Martin Nelson, a meteorologist at the National Hurricane Center, said the northern part of the eyewall came ashore at Grand Isle, about 97km south of New Orleans, at about 5am.
It was moving northward at 24kph.
Katrina's fury was soon felt at the Louisiana Superdome, normally home of professional football's Saints, which became the shelter of last resort on Sunday for about 9,000 of the area's poor, homeless and frail.
Electrical power at the Superdome failed at 5:02am, triggering groans from the crowd. Emergency generators kicked in, but the backup power runs only reduced lighting and is not strong enough to run the air conditioning.
Chenel Lagarde, spokesman for Entergy Corp, the main energy power company in the region, said that 370,000 customers in southeast Louisiana were estimated to be without power.
Even though the storm was hours away from New Orleans, Katrina's advance winds were already blowing slate tiles off the old roofs of the French Quarter.
The wind was blowing the rain sideways, and debris was carried up more than 31m. Power was on and off in sections of the city, and emergency vehicles patrolled the main streets, their blue and red lights flashing.
"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 at the gathering storm.
Katrina, which had weakened slightly overnight to a strong Category 4 storm, turned slightly eastward before hitting land, which would put the western eyewall -- the weaker side of the strongest winds of the storm -- over New Orleans.
"It's not as bad as the eastern side. It'll be plenty bad enough," said Eric Blake of the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Mayor Ray Nagin said he believed 80 percent of the city's 480,000 residents had heeded an unprecedented mandatory evacuation as Katrina threatened to become the most powerful storm ever to slam into the city.
"It's capable of causing catastrophic damage," said National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield. "Even well-built structures will have tremendous damage. Of course, what we're really worried about is the loss of lives.
"New Orleans may never be the same," he said.
Terry Ebbert, New Orleans director of homeland security, said more than 4,000 National Guardsmen were mobilizing in Memphis and will help police New Orleans streets.
The head of Jefferson Parish, which includes major suburbs and juts all the way to the storm-vulnerable coast, said some residents who stayed would be fortunate to survive.
"I'm expecting that some people who are die-hards will die hard," parish council president Aaron Broussard said.
The evacuation itself claimed lives. Three New Orleans nursing home residents died on Sunday after being taken by bus to a Baton Rouge church. Don Moreau, of the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner's Office, said the cause was likely to have been dehydration.
Katrina, which cut across Florida last week, had intensified into a colossal Category 5 over the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico, reaching top winds of 282kph before weakening as it neared the coast.
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