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New Orleans – Hurricane Katrina pounded the Gulf Coast with devastating force at daybreak Monday, sparing New Orleans the catastrophic hit that had been feared but inundating parts of the city and heaping damage on neighboring Mississippi, where it killed dozens, ripped away roofs and left coastal roadways impassable.

Packing 145-mph sustained winds as it made landfall, Katrina left more than a million people in three states without power and submerged highways even hundreds of miles from the center of the storm.

Officials reported at least 55 deaths, with 50 alone in Harrison County, Miss., which includes Gulfport and Biloxi. Emergency workers feared they would find more dead among people trapped in their homes and in collapsed buildings.

Jim Pollard, a spokesman for the Harrison County emergency operations center, said a number of people were found dead in an apartment complex in Biloxi. Seven others were found in the Industrial Seaway.

While Katrina proved to be less fearsome than had been predicted, it was still potent enough to rank as one of the most punishing hurricanes ever to hit the United States. Insurance experts said that damage could exceed $9 billion, which would make it one of the costliest storms on record.

In New Orleans, most of the levees held, but one was damaged, and floodwaters rose to rooftops in one neighborhood. Katrina’s howling winds stripped 15-foot sections off the roof of the Superdome, where as many as 10,000 evacuees were sheltered.

Reports of some of the worst damage came from east of the historic city of New Orleans, with an estimated 40,000 homes reported flooded in St. Bernard Parish.

In Gulfport, Miss., the storm left three of five hospitals without working emergency rooms, beachfront homes wrecked and major stretches of Mississippi’s coastal highway flooded and unpassable.

“It came on Mississippi like a ton of bricks,” the state’s governor, Haley Barbour, told a midday news conference “It’s a terrible storm.”

President Bush promised extensive assistance for hurricane victims, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency was expected to be working in the area for months, assessing damage to properties and allocating what is likely to be billions of dollars in aid to homeowners and businesses.

In Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, the governors declared search and rescue their top priority but said that high waters and strong winds were keeping them from that task.

The governors sent out police and National Guard members after reports of looting, and officials in some parts of Louisiana said they would impose a curfew.

Katrina was downgraded from Category 5 – the worst possible storm – to Category 4 as it hit land in eastern Louisiana just after 6 a.m., and in New Orleans, officials said the storm’s slight shift to the east had spared the city somewhat. The city is below sea level, and there had been predictions that the historic French Quarter would be under 18 or 20 feet of water.

Still, no one was finding much comfort in the city, with 100-mph winds and water surges of 15 feet. Officials said early in the day that more than 20 buildings had been toppled.

“I can’t say that we’ve escaped the worst,” said Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. “I think there is still damage that can be inflicted on the city. We don’t even know what the worst is.”

Preliminary damage estimates from Katrina – which raked across southern Florida last week as a Category 1 hurricane before reaching the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and making its run at the Gulf Coast – ranged from $9 billion to $16 billion. Only Hurricane Andrew, which ripped through parts of Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi in August 1992, was costlier – with nearly $21 billion in insured losses.

Beyond the property damage caused by flooding and the high winds, Katrina dealt a blow to the oil industry and the lucrative casinos that have been the economic engine for the region.

Since Friday, oil output in the Gulf of Mexico has been cut by 3.1 million barrels. Closing the casinos cost Mississippi $400,000 to $500,000 a day in lost tax revenue alone, and Barbour said officials had not been able to determine the extent of damage to the casinos.

In Louisiana, Blanco pleaded with residents who had evacuated not to rush back.

“The roads are flooded, the power is out, the phones are down and there is no food or water, and many trees are down. Wherever you live, it is still too dangerous for people to return home,” she said. “If you evacuated and you’re in a shelter, if you’re with friends and family, please, please stay there. Stay safe.”

Michael D. Brown, the director of the Federal Emergency Management, reminded people that most injuries from hurricanes occur after the storm has passed.

“Be careful,” he said, standing next to the governor at a news conference. “Don’t get in that water. Watch for downed power lines. If you’re going to use a chain saw, know how to use a chain saw. If you’re going to have a generator, know how to exercise and operate the generator. Be very, very careful. The storm is not over.”

Hurricane notes

Bush vows federal aid

President Bush on Monday pledged extensive federal help for victims of Hurricane Katrina to “get your lives back in order.”

The government put into effect a massive emergency assistance program that included rushing baby formula, communications equipment, generators, water and ice into hard-hit areas.

Bush also was expected to tap into the nation’s emergency petroleum stockpiles to help refineries affected by the storm, administration officials said. Final details were being worked out, they said.

The government’s supply – nearly 700 million barrels of oil stored in underground salt caverns along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast – was established to cushion oil markets during energy disruptions.

At a Medicare event in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., Bush assured hurricane victims that government help is on the way.

“For those of you who are concerned about whether or not we are prepared to help, don’t be,” he said. “We are.”

NASA plant in path

NASA’s hopes to launch another shuttle flight in March may have taken a hit from Hurricane Katrina on Monday, as the powerful storm passed over the factory that builds the shuttle’s external tanks.

The Michoud Assembly Facility is located 15 miles east of downtown New Orleans, at the eastern end of Lake Pontchartrain – that much closer than New Orleans to the center of Katrina as it passed by with steady winds of 135 mph.

June Malone, a spokeswoman for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., which oversees the factory, said late Monday that the three dozen NASA and Lockheed Martin employees who rode out the storm at the 832-acre site were waiting for winds to diminish before venturing outside for a full survey.

Anchor shuns cliche

Reporters flying from flagpoles during hurricanes have become a cliche, says NBC’s Brian Williams.

“There’s a danger that all these images start to look alike to viewers,” Williams said Monday via cellphone from New Orleans’ Superdome, his base of operations for Hurricane Katrina coverage.

“It’s an accepted TV news style that can fall into a pattern. I’d like to avoid it. … We’ve all done shots like that. (But) it’s still the best way to tell another human being, ‘This is what 80 miles an hour feels like.”‘

Williams, of “NBC Nightly News,” is the only A-list broadcast anchor reporting from the Gulf Coast.

In short

The American Red Cross said it had thousands of volunteers mobilized for the hurricane. It was the “largest single mobilization that we’ve done for any single natural disaster,” said spokesman Bradley Hague. The organization set up operational headquarters in Baton Rouge.

The Environmental Protection Agency dispatched emergency crews to Louisiana and Texas because of concern about oil and chemical spills.

The Coast Guard closed ports and waterways along the Gulf Coast and positioned craft around the area to be ready to conduct post-hurricane search-and-rescue operations.

Entergy Corp. and Southern Co., owners of electric utilities along the Gulf Coast, said almost 1.1 million customers from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle were without power Monday.

The Agriculture Department said its Food and Nutrition Service will provide meals and other commodities, such as infant formula, distilled water for babies and emergency food stamps.

The Federal Aviation Administration said airports were closed in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La.; Biloxi, Miss.; Mobile, Ala.; Pensacola, Fla.; and Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Airlines have moved their equipment away from the stricken areas and canceled all flights, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. Many air-traffic-control facilities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were closed.

The Defense Department dispatched emergency coordinators to Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi to provide a wide range of assistance including communications equipment, search-and-rescue operations and medical teams.

How you can help

Sending cash to an assistance organization, rather than donating goods, is the best way to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, a U.S. emergency preparedness official said Monday.

Cash donations “allow volunteer agencies to issue cash vouchers to victims so they can meet their needs,” said Michael Brown, undersecretary of homeland security for emergency preparedness and response.

Donate cash to: