Whew. Took a few hours, recharged, plugged back into the network. The latest on Hurricane Katrina:
•Now a Category 1 storm, soon to become a has-been.
•Not a moment too soon. Casualty reports remain sketchy; anecdotes abound, but hard numbers remain elusive. It will likely be Tuesday before a real assessment uncovers the death toll.
•Entire neighborhoods in New Orleans are underwater, according to fresh vid from WFOR. Some businesses have been looted; a CNN reporter was live on the phone and described people walking out of a supermarket with carts full of stolen food.
•Flood waters are still rising in New Orleans, according to CNN's Jack Cafferty. A network employee has relatives in the Big Easy; they phoned to say they were trapped on the second floor of their home and were waiting to be rescued.
•There could be "a lot of dead people" in Mississippi, according to a state official. Alabama could also suffer sobering casualty numbers; at Gulf Shores, Highway 59 is a lake right now, courtesy of storm surge.
•Damage to the local oil industry could top $3 billion, according to CNN.
Everyone is thankful that New Orleans didn't become Atlantis, as The Associated Press feared in a Sunday night headline. The best party city in America lives to throw another bash.
But no one has a clear picture yet on the real damage from Hurricane Katrina. And no one can even begin to think about when life might return to normal along the Gulf Coast in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.
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