The Grim Scenario:
By LESLIE WILLIAMS
Staff Writer / The Times-Picayune

Dead bodies hang in trees. Small boats have been swept away or reduced to
flotsam. Venomous snakes compete for space with resident shuddled on
rooftops and in attics. Water and food are rationed. Much of New Orleans is
under 8 to 14 feet of water mixed with human waste, rats and debris.

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It's the aftermath of a direct hit by one of New Orleans' greatest threats;
a slow-moving mid-level hurricane known as a Category III storm. And for
those who didn't get away ahead of the storm, the horror will not end
quickly.

A computer-generated worst-case scenario has the hurricane moving north from
the Gulf of Mexico into the city at 5 to 7 miles per hour. It first pushes
water from the marshes of the Barataria Basin over the West Bank levees. As
the storm system passes into Lake Pontchartrain, it whips up a swirling wall
of water that backwashes over east bank levees and begins to fill the
geographical saucer that is New Orleans.

The surviving one-story shotguns and two-story camelbacks in Algiers Point,
Mid-City and Carrollton not shredded by the storm surge or by wind gusts
swirling in excess of 111 miles per hour soak for days in water that has
risen to their eaves.

Staff file photo
The last hurricane to take a good shot at New Orleans was Andrew in 1992,
which grazed the city but devasted parts of LaPlace with a late-night
tornado.
Homes are without electricity or water service. Shelters are stuffed. And
everyone is trapped, whether alone or in clusters, waiting for the National
Guard to bring emergency food rations and supplies of drinking water.
Assuming no levee breaks, it will be three to five days before city pumps
have made much headway sluicing the inundation back into the lake, marshes
and river that encircle the metro region

. The worst-case scenario might seem the stuff of a summer movie heavy on
special effects, but in fact its horrors are drawn from the experience of
Betsy, Audrey and other hurricanes that have afflicted New Orleans in recent
decades. Betsy, which
brought 145-mph winds to the Louisiana coast in September 1965, killed 75
people. Audrey, which hit Cameron Parish with slower 135-mph winds in June
1957, killed more than 500 people.

The only remedy: evacuation, an emergency response more easily said than
done. One problem is the region's limited highway system, which will clog
hopelessly if the onslaught of those seeking escape to higher ground comes
late and all at once, as expected. The three days needed for an orderly
evacuation just doesn't gibe with the natural tendency to wait out storms on
the hunch that they will change course and make landfall somewhere else.

It's a deadly calculation, but not an unreasonable one. Hurricanes, after
all, are fickle beasts, and beating a retreat to Jackson, Miss., can seem
silly a day later as sunshine breaks over downtown New Orleans because the
storm has veered southwest to Corpus Christi. That's what Gilbert did in
1988, only to change course again and make landfall not in Texas at all, but
at La Pesca, Mexico. Compounding the willingness of residents to gamble is
widespread ignorance of just how devastating the big one will be.

The example of emergency personnel -- the folks who know hurricanes best --
should wake up anyone tempted to take a laissez-faire approach to
preparedness. Walter Maestri, director of the Jefferson Parish Emergency
Management Department, will pack his wife and sons off to Jackson three days
before any Gulf hurricane could possibly hit New Orleans. His job will keep
Maestri here, as will Jim Hubbard's as chief executive officer for the
American Red Cross in Louisiana. But like Maestri, Hubbard won't subject his
family to the same risk. Seventy-two hours ahead of a possible New Orleans
landfall, Hubbard's wife and their Pekinese, Pepper, have made plans to be
in a car or plane headed for Dallas to stay with relatives.

``Our problem is psychological,'' Hubbard said of the area's lackluster
evacuation
readiness. ``There's a generation now that has not endured a Betsy or a
Camille.'' Louisianians in their 20s are among those considered least likely
to follow emergency officials' recommendation to create a hurricane fund to
finance trips to safer areas during hurricane season. For those still
thinking of staying, Robert Eichhorn, the director of the Office of
Emergency Preparedness for New Orleans, suggests they sample what's to come
if a hurricane bombards this area.