Hurricane Katrina rocks New Orleans
(Reuters)
Updated: 2005-08-30 07:29

FLYING BILLBOARDS AND PALMS

Artist Matt Rinard, who owns a business in the French Quarter of New Orleans, holed up on the fifth floor of a Canal Street hotel and watched the storm roll in.

He said pieces of sheet metal and plywood, billboards and pieces of palm trees flew down Canal, which borders the Quarter, as huge gusts of wind blew through the city.

"It's blustery. You can see the speed of it now, it's unbelievable," he said. "The power went out about an hour and a half ago and so now I'm just watching the occasional dumb ass walking down Canal Street."

Officials said three people from a New Orleans nursing home had died during their evacuation to a Baton Rouge church.

New Orleans had not been hit directly by a hurricane since 1965 when Hurricane Betsy blew in, flooding the city. The storm killed about 75 people.

Katrina was making its second U.S. landfall after striking southern Florida last week, where it caused widespread flooding and seven deaths.

The storm forced oil companies to shut down production from many of the offshore platforms that provide a quarter of U.S. oil and gas output.

Shell said two of its oil drilling rigs under contract were adrift in the Gulf of Mexico. One rig is owned by Nobel, the other by Transocean Inc.

U.S. oil futures jumped nearly $5 a barrel in opening trade to touch a peak of $70.80 before settling back.

Katrina could become the costliest storm in U.S. history, exceeding the $20.9 billion of inflation-adjusted insurance claims from Hurricane Andrew, which hit Miami in 1992.

Air Worldwide Corp. of Boston estimated a $12 billion to $26 billion insurance payout for Katrina. Risk Management Solutions Inc. of Newark, California, estimated damage of $10 billion to $25 billion.

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