Building after building under water.【B1】in shelters. Thousands of others unsu

Building after building under water. Refugees in shelters. Thousands of others unsure where to go. Appeals for help. Anarchy. Bodies in streets. This is what one of America’s historic cities was reduced to this week by a powerful storm, Katrina.
   Officials want everyone still left in New Orleans, Louisiana, to leave for now. The mayor of New Orleans says thousands may be dead. Hurricane Katrina also caused death and destruction in parts of Mississippi and Alabama along the Gulf of Mexico. Federal officials reported Friday that more than one million five hundred thousand homes and businesses remained without electric power.
   New Orleans is famous for its wild Mardi Gras celebrations and night life in the French Quarter. Yet the city of nearly five hundred thousand people was built below sea level. New Orleans has depended on levees, dams made of earth, to control floods from the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain.
   Katrina struck on Monday. New Orleans avoided a direct hit. But two of the levees failed the next day. Most of the city was flooded. Helicopters dropped huge sandbags to fill the breaks. But the water had no place to go. Pumping stations had no power.
   America faces one of the worst natural events in its history. President Bush says the recovery will take years. Congress returned from a summer holiday to approve a request for ten thousand five hundred million dollars in emergency spending. The Bush administration is expected to ask for more in the weeks to come.