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New Orleans Levees Tested As Gustav Lashes Gulf Coast
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"They all left, and I told them I'd keep a watchful eye over it all," Garrett said. "They trusted me."
Federal officials said the worst damage may have occurred in coastal parishes, where Coast Guard overflights and ground assessments may not come until Tuesday.
Army Corps of Engineers officials received reports that Grand Isle was "completely overwashed" and that the area around Houma and Morgan City, where more than 100,000 people live, faces "a very significant danger," Riley said.
"We're very, very concerned about flooding in southern Louisiana, and overtopping of any [levee] systems down there and surge through those highly populated areas in the wetlands," he said.
Grand Isle Mayor David Camardelle disputed Riley's report, saying the storm surge there barely reached 10 feet, putting about four feet of water in parking lots and yards. All houses in the area are required to be built 12 to 15 feet off the ground. "We thought, three years after Katrina, 'Here we go again.' [But] it never happened," Camardelle said.
Concern also focused on Plaquemines, Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes in southern Louisiana; and on coastal Waveland, Miss., where Gustav swept 11 feet of storm surge into houses.
Air Force Maj. Gen. William H. Etter, director of domestic operations for the National Guard Bureau, said 14,000 troops are on the Gulf Coast, with up to 50,000 authorized to respond.
U.S. health authorities reported evacuating 9,000 medical patients, including 8,000 from nursing homes, 460 of them by air. The three deaths of critically ill patients were confirmed by W. Craig Vanderwagen, an assistant secretary of health and human services, who defended decisions to evacuate hospitals and noted the far greater death toll among patients who were not evacuated during Katrina.
"In Hurricane Katrina, we had scores of patients die," he said. "While we accept no death, we feel this is something that is within our margin of error."
Elsewhere, the American Red Cross reported housing 45,000 people in 340 shelters in 10 states Sunday night, 50 percent more than it sheltered the night before Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005.
Hsu reported from Washington. Staff writers Peter Whoriskey in Baton Rouge; David Montgomery and Philip Rucker in New Orleans; Dana Hedgpeth in Lockport, La.; and William Branigin in Washington contributed to this report.
