NEW ORLEANS — Driving northwest on Inter-state 10 yesterday morning, police officer KevinDiel entered a world half-submerged.

Beyond the Superdome — still engulfed by water,its top parking tier now a landing strip for militaryhelicopters — one passes graveyards whose above-

ground crypts havebecome islands ina fetid sea. Then,over near the 610split, the freewaydisappears under-water. That’swhere Diel

stopped off in the patrol car that holds all he hasleft. After a chaotic week trying to restore order to acity ravaged by Hurricane Katrina, he wasn’t due onshift until 6 p.m. So he headed out to see how closehe could get to his rented two-story house in theflooded Lakeview district.

Diel, 22, moved there four months ago from thecity’s West Bank, “which is dry,” he noted with irony,

“into a safer neighborhood with the other cops.”A rifle slung over his shoulder, Diel stood in the

hot sun and assessed the seaworthiness of a flat-bot-tomed boat lying in the shallow water lapping at thehighway. He had heard the houses were 20, maybe30 feet underwater in his neighborhood. That was agood mile and a half across the water from where hestood, sweating bullets in a bulletproof vest coveredby his black police T-shirt.

In a flood-stricken city where hotel rooms with-out electricity sell for $100 a night and policehave already siphoned out gas from all the aban-doned vehicles, a working boat with a full tank ofgas is hard to come by. The motor on this onewas busted, but there were a few paddles insideand some boards that could be used for the samepurpose. Diel felt it was worth a shot.

It was slow going, paddling down the interstatetoward the airport. The water had risen to abouta foot below a railroad bridge. With no room torow under, Diel and a crew of shot-hungry pho-tographers and a reporter who hitched a ride in

the commandeered boat humped it up over thetrestle, scavenging another abandoned rowboatin the process to form a caravan bound for 323Kenilworth St.

Back in the water, the boats passed a factory-like building bristling with half-submerged thickbeige pumps, which Diel later identified as “ournew, state-of-the-art pumping system that failed.”

Turning off onto a side street, all was hushed,save for the choppers that roared sporadicallyoverhead, ruffling the brownish-green water. Nocorpses were visible. Enormous iridescent dragon-flies skimmed low over debris and tree limbs bob-bing in the water.

It was as if the bayou rose and engulfed the neigh-borhood.

Navigating past submerged cars and the tops ofdrowned trees, Diel reached his house about anhour and a half after pushing off from the inter-state. The street signs barely poked above thewater. “It’s hard to recognize just the top half ofa house,” he said.

At Diel’s place, the water came up to the bottomof his living room window on the first floor. Heshimmied up on the roof, using the magazine fromhis gun to break open a window on the upper storybefore stepping inside to the house he left the Sun-day before the hurricane.

Downstairs, he found his couch and refrigeratorfloating. He retreated upstairs to try and salvage hiscomputer equipment, and began to cry.

Minutes later, he left, taking an extra gun holsterand a photo of his father. Diel had no renters’ insur-ance and estimated that he lost about $20,000 to$25,000 worth of stuff.

Still, he said he wants to stay in New Orleans. Aself-described adrenaline junkie, Diel loves his workpatroling the sometimes gritty streets here.

By his estimation, at least 400 of the city’s 1,600or so officers quit after the hurricane and ensuingmayhem. “A lot said it wasn’t worth it, they wantedto worry about themselves and move on,” Diel said.“And if I don’t get laid off, there’s plenty of roomleft for advancement now that everybody has left.”

BY RICHARD J. DALTON JR.STAFF WRITER

After another long day of taking aerialphotos of areas hit by Hurricane Katrina,a cameraman for the National Oceanic &Atmospheric Administration began post-ing the photos online at the business cen-ter of a Gulf Coast hotel, home to manydisplaced residents.

Nearby, a woman in her 60s who hadwalked in with a cane was surfing the Inter-net when she began sobbing. “I said, ‘Whatare you crying about?’ ” NOAA cameramanSteven Snow recalled. “She said, ‘I foundmy house. I know it’s standing.’ ”

“I said, ‘Oh good, I'm glad my picturesare doing some good.’ And she said, ‘Oh,you took these?’ I said, ‘Yeah, we tookthose yesterday.’ And she just brokedown crying and gave me a little hug. Shewas very happy.”

Depending on how their homes appear inthe photos on computer screens, evacueeshave expressed either joy or sorrow at thebusiness center of Panama City, Fla.’s Marri-ott Bay Point Resort Village, which is hometo many hurricane evacuees and also servesas a base for the NOAA team taking aerialphotos of the devastation. “There were justnumerous people that were so happy,” saidStephen White, who processed the NOAAimages. “And there was actually people cry-ing. It was very emotional.”

Hurricane survivors all over are turningto the NOAA Web site —http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/katrina/ — tocheck out aerial photos of the devastation.Hurricane victims also have turned to Goo-gle, which has posted the aerial photos andmade them searchable by street address viaits maps.google.com and its mapping soft-ware, available at earth.google.com. By Sat-urday, the NOAA site had served up morethan 4,500 gigabytes — that’s 4.5 millionmegabytes — of images. To get a sense ofvolume, a high-quality image from a digitalcamera can be just a few megabytes.

The images are very detailed. One man atthe hotel who asked Snow for help findingimages of his home discovered a surprise.“There was a big, brand-new RV that haddrifted over onto his front step, and youcould see that in the pictures,” Snow said.

NOAA’s aerial photo team has spentabout eight hours a day flying over devastat-ed areas since last Tuesday, collecting andposting more than 6,000 images of the areashit, said Lt. Cmdr. Will Odell, a pilot forNOAA’s aircraft operations center.

Odell spoke to one woman who evacuat-ed with her siblings and mother, andwhose father stayed behind.

“They didn’t hear from their dad forfour or five days,” Odell said. “But theycould see from the photographs that thearea wasn’t hard hit. And finally they gotin touch with their dad and he was fine.”

Greg Hernandez, an NOAA spokesman,said people have e-mailed and called himwith questions — and thanks. One man saidhe had been afraid to take his mother to herhome, fearing it had been destroyed.“Through the aerial images they foundtheir home, which turned out to be high anddry — unaffected,” Hernandez said.

NEWSDAY PHOTOS / VIOREL FLORESCU

New Orleans police officer Kevin Diel returned to his Lakeview neighborhood to check on his two-story home yesterday. Because the water had risen to the bottom of his first-floor living room window,Diel had to climb onto the roof and enter his home by breaking a second-floor window with the magazine of his gun.

BY RIDGELY OCHSSTAFF CORRESPONDENT

BILOXI, Miss. — More than a weekafter Hurricane Katrina smacked into thisGulf Coast town, the scene outside theMain Street Baptist Church resembled asurreal street fair.

As many homes in this poor, mostlyblack neighborhood lay in splinters andelectric lines hung in swooping arcs overlittered streets, residents gathered to getwater, food, supplies and comfort fromeach other. Many waited patiently Mon-day and yesterday to get tetanus shotsfrom a mobile medical unit donated bythe Manhattan-based Children’s HealthFund. Others, who need medication forvarious ailments but have been without itfor days, waited to have their blood pres-sure checked.

Paul Simon, a major sponsor of the non-profit organization, which supports pedi-atric medical units nationwide, was onhand yesterday, wearing a baseball capand a worried expression. A few peoplerecognized him and posed for pictures,but most residents didn’t seem to noticethe singer-songwriter. They were still try-ing to come to grips with the devastationthat has swept away life as they haveknown it.

Many like Don Rankin, 48, have beensleeping outside. Having survived 51/2 hoursin his almost water-filled attic, Rankin saidhis home is now covered in mud and he’sworriedabout gas leaks. Despite the destruc-tion, he’s determined to stay.

“I was born and raised here,” he said. “Ididn’t get drowned. My mama is living, allmy family is living. It’s all right.”

Others are less certain about whetherthey will rebuild their lives here or else-where. Stevonne Doughty, 43, says she’llprobably send her 16-year-old daughter to

live with relatives so that she won’t losevaluable school time in her junior year. Anurse on disability, she’s unclear aboutwhere she will live. For the past week, she’sbeen staying in the church, where she, herdaughter and son fled along with about 100other residents before the storm. Theyspent the next three days with little food orwater.

Food and other supplies, includingclothes and linens, are now more plenti-ful, she said. “But what’s the point of tak-ing sheets and towels if you don’t have ahome to take them to?”

The church’s pastor, the Rev. KennethHaynes, said members are still feeding 500to 600 people two hot meals a day — downfrom 1,000 right after the hurricane. He saidhe is moved by the generosity of churchesaround the country, who have been sendingsupplies — everything from toilet articlesto infant formula to flashlights — to hischurch and other churches in the area. Hehad less kind things to say about the FederalEmergency Management Agency. “FEMAcame in the first day and they haven’t beenback,” he said.

Even though the displaced face uncer-tain futures, many seem to be coping.

“People are basically upbeat,” said Au-relia Jones-Taylor, chief executive ofthe Aaron Henry Community HealthCenter in Clarksdale, Miss., whose medi-cal mobile unit is partially funded bythe Children’s Health Fund. “They ap-pear to be supporting each other as acommunity and helping others.”

Rodney Thompson, 40, who helpedsave seven neighbors, including a9-month-old he held aloft in roiling wa-ters up to his waist, said he’s started re-building his house. He’s sleeping out-side right now but remains undaunted.

He said, “You’ve got to keep on mov-ing on.”

TECHNOLOGY

Victims’eye inthe sky

RealityRealityhitshitshomehome

KATRINA

In Biloxi, manyin communitylooking ahead

KRT PHOTO

Singer Paul Simon, center, listens to the Rev. Edward Moses during a visit toBiloxi, Miss., Monday to help with an emergency mobile unit.

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BY JENNIFER SMITHSTAFF CORRESPONDENT

NEW ORLEANS — A tapedcardboard sign on the frontof the Greyhound bus stationnear Interstate 10 proclaims“We are taking New OrleansBack.”An idling Amtrak locomo-

tive generates most of the elec-tricity. Welcome to the newCentral Booking for criminalsuspects in Orleans Parish.The main jail was evacuated

last week after being floodedwith 5 feet of water, with in-mates and guards dispersed.Now, law and order seemed tobe returning to the city, eightdays after Hurricane Katrinasmashed the city’s infrastruc-ture and set loose panic andlooting in some neighbor-hoods. By yesterday, streetsthat had been patrolled lastweek by a skeleton crew ofNew Orleans police officersfairly bristled with armed peo-ple in uniform — the NationalGuard, state troopers fromacross the country, even agentsfrom the Bureau of Alcohol, To-bacco and Firearms.Operations at the bus station

are being run by the LouisianaState Department of Correc-tions, which stepped in at theprompting of State AttorneyGeneral Charles Foti Jr. — theformer Orleans Parish criminalsheriff — to fill the apparentbreach left by local leadership.“We wish the sheriff would

come on back,” Burl Cain, war-den of Louisiana State Peniten-tiary at Angola, said yesterdaymorning.The sheriff Cain referred to

is Orleans Parish Criminal Sher-iff Marlon Gusman, who statecorrections officials said hasbeen difficult to reach sinceHurricane Katrina forced anevacuation of approximately6,000 inmates from OrleansParish Prison.“We would love it if he

would come help us,” Cainsaid, adding that Gusman hadnot returned to the makeshiftjail since Tuesday. State cor-rections officers in boatshave since visited the floodedprison to try to retrieve book-ing records, many of whichwere soaked when the waterrose, he said. Reporters alsohave been unable to reachhim for comment.The Orleans prisoners have

been parceled out to variousstate prisons, including the all-male Angola prison, whereCain hired the first ob/gyn doc-tor to handle the 500 femalesnow housed there. “This morn-ing we had our first baby bornat Angola,” he said yesterday.Since Sunday, a total of 171 ar-

restees—most booked for loot-ing — have passed throughhere, said Lt. Col. BobbyAchord, an official from theLouisiana State Penitentiary in

Angola who came down toNew Orleans on Friday to setthings up.What he found when he ar-

rived was chaos. Garbage andfeces were strewn across thefloor. Looters had pillaged thegift shop and run riots in theSubway sandwich restaurant;displaced residents who soughtshelter here had dragged officefurniture outside.Out back, the numbered

slots where buses parked havebecome holding cells, hemmedin by 12-foot-high chain-linkfences topped with razor wire.Nearby, large red holding tanksthat look like wading poolshold water to wash down thecells and for staffers to bathe inportable showers that Wal-Mart donated. Each cell has adoorless Porta Potti. “Theyhave no expectation of priva-cy,” Achord said.But they are, for now, in semi-

private rooms—only six prison-ers were in evidence yesterdaymorning, although Achord said120menand37womenwerepro-cessed and moved out Tuesday.Cain said he expected morewould be booked later for loot-ing. “The worms come out atnight,” he said.

BY EMI ENDOAND CHAU LAMSTAFF WRITERS

Even as Nassau and SuffolkCountyofficials continued tode-velop programs to house up to300survivors ofHurricaneKatri-na, Gov. George Pataki said theFederal Emergency Manage-ment Agency has put on holdplans to fly large numbers ofevacuees to theNewYork area.Pataki said yesterday that

while the state was preparingto accept 5,000 evacuees — in-cluding 1,000 in New York Cityand 150 each in Nassau and Suf-folk— FEMA suspended evacu-ations outside the Southeast fornow, because many prefer to

stay closer to their homes.“The evacuees want to go

home, they don’t want to gosomeplace else,” Pataki said inEastport as he selected trees tobe planted at the six-acreWorld Trade Center memorial.Suffolk County Executive

Steve Levy and Nassau Coun-ty Executive Thomas Suozzisaid late last week that FEMArequested shelter for the evac-uees for up to 18 months, pos-sibly as soon as today.“We’re hanging on the edge

of our seat for the latest indica-tion as to who is coming andhow many,” Levy said.But as of last night, the state

emergency management office,which is coordinating local Kat-

rina assistance efforts, had notdirected the counties to aban-don their plans, and local offi-cials said they expect to be up-dated again this morning.FEMA is asking New York andother states to stand by whilethe agency tries to identify sur-vivors who want to leave,where they want to go and howbest to get them there, saidspokesman Butch Kierney.There are, however, no plansto send evacuees to New Yorktoday. “It could be days beforewe know for sure,” he said.Tentative plans include fly-

ing New York-bound evacu-ees to Stewart InternationalAirport in Newburgh wherethey would stay at Camp

Smith in Peekskill for twodays to receive medical treat-ment and get new identifica-tion if necessary.Theywould thenbe transport-

ed to locations across the state,including Long Island, said Jo-sephWilliams, Suffolk’s commis-sioner of Fire, Rescue and Emer-gency Services.At a meeting of the Nassau

Legislature in Mineola lastnight, members of Long Is-land’s black community askedfor assurance that the evacu-ees would not be relegated tothe county’s poorest commu-nities.“The only question I have is

where are we going to putthem?” said Douglas Mayers, of

Freeport, president of the Free-port-Roosevelt NAACP.Iris Johnson, executive direc-

tor of the county Economic Op-portunity Commission, told thelawmakers, “The last thing wewant to do is shortchange ourown people.”In Nassau, the evacuees

would first be taken to SUNYOld Westbury for processingbefore being relocated to 10shelters and a number of areahotels and other sites. In Suf-folk, officials were planning totransport evacuees by bus orplane to the shuttered Brun-swick Hospital Center.Staff writers Mitchell Freedmanand Brandon Bain contributed

to this story.

KATRINA

A stall in evacuations to LI, elsewhere

becomes makeshift jail

NEWSDAY PHOTO / VIOREL FLORESCU

transformed into a city jail.

AFP / GETTY IMAGES PHOTO

An inmate waits for his temporary jail cell yesterday.

� After inmates wereevacuated from cells,operations resumedhere, but a leadershipbreach causes concern

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‘Unwatering’ proceeds� But it’s hardly a cinch as Army Corps ofEngineers works around clock to get pumpsto drain tainted water into Lake Pontchartrain

NEW ORLEANS — Dankwater still maroons homes andbusinesses in about half of NewOrleans. But inch by murkyinch, sewage-tainted floodwateris being pumped out of thestreets and into Lake Pontchar-train as a host of federal, stateand local agencies labor in a mas-sive effort to dry out the city.

The Army Corps of Engi-neers, which is supervising whatofficials call the “unwatering”project, said most of the watershould be removed from Or-leans Parish by Oct. 2 and fromhard-hit St. Bernard Parish andeastern New Orleans by Oct. 8.

In the days since the leveescrumbled under Hurricane Kat-rina’s assault and unleashed atorrent of water on this bowl-shaped city,workers suchas pumpingstation super-visor Renaul-do Robertson— who wasstranded forthree days atone floodedfacility —have put innearly24-hour shiftsto resurrectthe 21 munici-pal pumpingstations. Atstationswhere thepower willnot flow, Rob-ertson andother work-ers turn largewheels by hand that open gatesin the flooded canals and drainwater toward other stationswith running pumps.

Ten of those facilities arenow operational, with 27working pumps, the ArmyCorps of Engineers said yes-terday.

The municipal pumps areaugmented by 46 portable die-sel-powered ones like thosethat subcontractor Cajun Con-structors trucked down fromBaton Rouge to drain the sub-merged lakefront district nearPontchartrain Park. About 100people, some in white contam-ination suits and visored hel-mets, are working to drainflooded regions here and far-ther east, quality control man-ager Jamey Sandefur said.

The work has not been with-out hitches. With electrical ser-vice out in much of the city, thepumps guzzle “inordinate”amounts of fuel, Sandefur said.And checkpoints ringing thecity have slowed traffic to acrawl, nearly tripling the timeit takes to get supplies.

Still, by Sunday, the flooding

in the Gentilly Woods neigh-borhood had gone down about16 inches. The water revealedfencetops and crushed bananatrees as it receded and left mil-dewed stripes that reachednearly to the rooftops.

The diesel-powered pumpsresemble cannons whose muz-zles shoot a constant stream offoul brown liquid over a retain-ing wall that separates the hous-es here from the Inter-HarborNavigational Canal. The flood-water then forms a stinking,

foamy poolthat drainssouthward,cutting acrosshurricane-devastatedboatyards to-ward thecanal and fi-nally empty-ing into LakePontchar-train.

Dumpingwater fouledwith fecesand bacteriainto the large,shallow lakethat formsthe CrescentCity’s curv-ing northernborder mightnot strike

some as the most sanitarycourse of action.

But Chris Piehler, a senior en-vironmental scientist with Loui-siana’s Department of Environ-mental Quality, defends theplan, saying the payoff out-weighs the possible environ-mental concerns.

Piehler said extensive testingby state and federal environ-mental agencies shows thewater has more “organic sub-stances” — excrement, dirt andvegetation brought in by thehurricane’s fierce winds —than it does persistent toxicsubstances such as chemicals.

While hardly appetizing, thatmix is something that Piehlersaid Lake Pontchartrain can as-similate without taking toomuch of an environmental hit.

The sewage could lead tosome temporary mortalityamong the fish that swim here,Piehler said. “The pros are wecan use existing facilities to getthe water off city streets as soonas possible.”

Special correspondentMarlene Naanes

contributed to this story.

BY MARLENE NAANESSPECIAL CORRESPONDENT

NEW ORLEANS — Thesmell of sewage filled the airthe day Renauldo Robertson re-turned to the pumping stationwhere he was stranded forthree days after Hurricane Kat-rina hit town. Two weeks later,the station in Uptown had noelectricity, the pumps were stillflooded with murky water, andRobertson was unnerved.

“We had some nightmareshere,” said Robertson, a27-year veteran of the citySewerage & Water Board.“I’ve been in and out of hurri-canes all my life. This is the

only one that shook me.”Robertson, a pump station su-

pervisor, was stranded twoweeks ago in the 100-year-oldpumping station without food,water or electricity. He and hisworkers were about to leaveafter the hurricane hit. “Wethought we had the waterunder control so I thought,‘Maybe I’m going home,’ ” hesaid. “Then I saw water rollingdown Broad Street.”

Robertson and the otherworkers climbed to a catwalkinside, hoping to ride out theflooding. “The bugs were eat-ing us up,” he said. “The heatwas getting to us, so we actual-ly had to stand in the water.”

The workers survived on pil-fered food and water sent to thestation on mattresses by looters,he said, until a supervisor wasable to boat to there three dayslater. “It was traumatic,” he re-called of the boat ride throughnearby housing projects. “Thepeople in the projects were act-ing like they wanted to take outthe boat and try to kill us.”

In the ride out, Robertsonhad to cut his boat from a tan-gled mess in the water andpassed a floating body. He even-tually arrived at an interstateramp where trucks rescuedpump station workers and resi-dents. Robertson eventuallymade it to another pump sta-

No easy job to turn the

KATRINA

Pump station supervisor Renauldo Robertson with a century-old piece of machinery that helps

AFP / GETTY IMAGES PHOTO

Pumping tainted water into thelarge, shallow lake worries some.

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