US: Hurricane Ivan, whipped by huge water falls, lashed into the southern Gulf states of Alabama and Florida at 7 a.m. Irish time yesterday, leaving at least 12 people dead and a trail of destruction that in places resembled a battle zone.
Mobile in Alabama and Pensacola in Florida were worst hit and some buildings collapsed, others had their roofs ripped off and severe flooding made some streets resemble rivers.
Ivan is now moving in a north westerly direction and has been down-graded to a tropical storm, but now threatens the states of Georgia and Alabama with tornadoes and torrential rains.
The New Orleans area, which evacuated nearly one million residents, had a miraculous escape.
The New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin summed up the feelings of most people, saying, "We're breathing a big sigh of relief", after the Crescent city escaped the worst of the wind and rain as Ivan veered eastwards into Alabama and Florida.
As Ivan made its Gulf Coast landfall, city official Walter Maelstri added: "It's almost as if the hand of God is protecting the parish of New Orleans."
In the Florida Panhandle, where tornadoes spawned by the hurricane killed at least eight people and washed away part of a road bridge. "We have a report . . . that it looks like a war zone," said a spokeswoman for the sheriff's office in Bay County.
An eight-year-old girl was killed when a tree collapsed on her mobile home in the Panhandle town of Milton, and a man died in his car when, according to a witness, the tornado "picked the car up".
Four other people with medical conditions died after being evacuated from the New Orleans area to safer parts of Louisiana.
About 3 million people were without power and thousands huddled in shelters.
Ivan had killed 68 people in a deadly trek through the Caribbean over the past 10 days and its eye hurtled ashore in the early hours near Gulf Shores, Alabama, just west of Florida's panhandle.
In Pensacola, three hospitals were damaged as well as the Pensacola Civic Center.
Roofs were ripped from homes and hotels. A bridge over Escambia Bay was cut in two. Buildings were surrounded by water.
"Devastation. That's the best description I can give you," said Police Lt. Rodney Eagerton in Pensacola, a city of 60,000 in far northwestern Florida that straddles a bay and is fringed by beaches.
Fearing the worst, authorities in New Orleans had earlier declared a state of emergency and urged a voluntary evacuation, a call responded to by up to one million residents of the greater New Orleans area. A curfew was also imposed from 2 p.m. Wednesday. Television images of the National Guard patrolling the streets, and warnings from police chiefs to potential looters turned this normally bustling city into a ghost town.
Out on the streets just after the curfew, the pretty Spanish colonial streets of the French quarter were only short of tumbleweeds to complete the picture of abandonment.
Magnolia trees swayed gently and lianas hanging from the balconies with ornate railings, swayed gently in the breeze. Only a young couple and three women walking their dogs were about.
Down on the Mississippi river front walk, a half a dozen vagrants and hippies sat around the Levee, looking out on the river, awaiting the storm.
One young man said police had earlier cleared the Levee but some had just drifted back. "I am going to sit out all night," he drawled, adding proudly as he looked up, "It's my first."
Up on Bourbon Street the curfew was observed, with the exception of a couple of small businesses that remained open for the customers who were not there. Police cars cruised the streets but did not confront any of the few that were about.
Later as darkness and rain began to fall, I discovered an Irish bar on Decatur Street. Molly's on the Market was having a hurricane party where into the small hours it was all youthful bravado of high-fives and the toast "Happy Hurricane". Later yesterday New Orleans was still shut down for business as people took a day off before the welcome return to normality today.
On the river front, Clarence Bowie, an elderly black saxophonist lonely for an audience, stopped playing to talk. Then takes my request for Strangers on the Shore whose haunting melody wafts out over the gently lapping Mississippi and breathes new life into what the Big Easy is really all about.
Tropical Storm Jeanne became a hurricane yesterday, raising the threat to the Dominican Republic, Haiti and hundreds of islands in the northern Caribbean.
Jeanne's sustained winds grew to 80 mph as it hit Puerto Rico, a US territory that is home to about four million people, and the Dominican Republic.
Residents on the north coast of Haiti, the poor nation of eight million that shares the island of Hispaniola with the Dominican Republic, were warned to expect tropical storm conditions. Haiti has been largely deforested and is vulnerable to deadly flash floods and mudslides.
At 8 a.m. local time, the centre of the storm was over the eastern tip of the Dominican Republic. It was moving due west at about 9 mph and was expected to turn slightly, toward the.