Chaotic Conditions In New Orleans

With 80 percent of the city flooded by Hurricane Katrina, looters floated garbage cans filled with clothing and jewelry down the street in a dash to grab what they could. Meanwhile, the governor of New Orleans said those left in the city would have to be evacuated, including thousands at the Superdome.

CBS News Correspondent Lee Cowan reports that the order that prevailed in the city leading up to the largest evacuation in history is now beginning to fray.

At one downtown Walgreens, when police finally showed up, they assisted looters take food and other essential supplies over to another neighborhood that had been hit harder.

A man walked down Canal Street with a pallet of food on his head. His wife, who refused to give her name, insisted they weren't stealing from the nearby Winn-Dixie supermarket. "It's about survival right now," she said as she held a plastic bag full of purloined items. "We got to feed our children. I've got eight grandchildren to feed."

At a drug store on Canal Street just outside the French Quarter, two police officers with pump shotguns stood guard as workers from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel across the street loaded large laundry bins full of medications, snack foods and bottled water.

"This is for the sick," Officer Jeff Jacob said. "We can commandeer whatever we see fit, whatever is necessary to maintain law."

The looting was taking place in full view of passing National Guard trucks and police cruisers.

One man with an armload of clothes even asked a policeman, "can I borrow your car?"

Meanwhile, residents of the city may face a long exile from their homes. CBS affiliate WWL-TV reports that the Jefferson Parish president said residents will probably be allowed back in town in a week, with identification only, but only to get essentials and clothing. They will then be asked to leave and not come back for one month.

Meanwhile, water continues to rise as the mayor told city workers to flee for their lives.

"The levee broke!" one woman yelled outside Johnny White's Bar on Bourbon Street in the French Quarter.

CBS News Radio reports officials are using helicopters to drop 3,000 pound sandbags into the breach of the levees to stop more water from flooding onto New Orleans streets.

Panic took hold as another levee ruptured and water suddenly rose in the French Quarter and other areas of the sodden city of 485,000 people, a place that sits like a bowl between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River.

The city's main newspaper, The Times-Picayune, told staffers to leave their building.

"Water continues to rise around our building, as it is throughout the region," the newspaper said in a note posted on its website. "We want to evacuate our employees and families while we are still able to safely leave our building."

The narrow, debris-filled streets of the tourist-oriented quarter filled with more than two feet of water. Terrified by what they heard on the radio, some people ran down the streets, screaming and warning others.

Canal Street became a canal.

"People are afraid of drowning" said Greg Reaves, 45, who tried to flee the city Monday but turned around after confronting high water on Interstate 10. "I think that's what's causing the panic."

Mayor C. Ray Megin told all city employees — those he could communicate with — to leave. Many heeded his advice.

People stranded on the streets were picked up by rescue vehicles and ferried to the Superdome, already the steamy home of 10,000 people forced from their homes by the Category 4 hurricane that ripped through the entire region Monday.

"It appears that now the bowl is beginning to fill — not rapidly but slowly," said Walter Maestri, emergency operations manager for Jefferson Parish, a county just west of New Orleans.

Officials had warned that if Katrina hit New Orleans dead-on, flood waters could rise up to 20 feet immediately. The storm wobbled slightly eastward, offering a slight, brief reprieve that was ending Tuesday.

"We're damn close right now to that worst case scenario," said radio host Dave Cohen, whose AM radio station steadfastly transmitted emergency information during the storm and its aftermath.

Officials acknowledged Tuesday that portions of Interstate 10 had become impenetrable, leaving few options to exit the city.

People frantically tried to get through the water to the only exit out of New Orleans that wasn't flooded — the Cresent City Connector, which led westward along U.S. 90 toward Baton Rouge for a state shelter in the town of Gonzales.

Cell phones barely worked, if at all, and families tried desperately to communicate with one another. Police couldn't communicate with each other, so beat cops drove where they could, on alert for looters and people in distress.

Conditions worsened for residents that are trapped Superdome. Dozens slept on the walkway surrounding the superdome's field and seating eager for cooler temperatures and fresh air as conditions inside worsened and frustrations grew.

However Gov. Kathleen Blanco is developing a plan to evacuate those who are left at all city shelters, including the Superdome.

Kathleen Blanco called the the situation "untenable and heartbreaking."

Because of two levees that broke today, the city is rapidly filling with water, and power may be down for a long time.

Blanco said the storm severed a major water main, leaving the city without drinkable water.

Until that plan goes into effect, National Guardsmen let some of the 10,000 people sheltering inside the arena take their bedding out onto the concourse, where it was cooler and the breeze was welcome. The soldiers made sure they didn't leave, though.

For the refugees — many of them poor and frail — the Superdome was a welcome shelter from Katrina, but has been getting steadily more miserable as the hours march on.

The bathrooms are filthy and barrels overflow with trash. With the air conditioning off since power went out Monday morning, the bricks are slick with humidity.

"I don't care how bad my house is. It's got to be better than this," said Ruby Jackson, 56, of New Orleans. "At least I could take a shower and sleep in my own bed."

Two people have died, according to Doug Thornton, a regional vice president for the company that manages the Superdome. He provided no other details.

Terry Ebbert, New Orleans' homeland security chief, had said someone died after plunging from an upper level of the stadium. He said the person probably jumped.