NEW ORLEANS — The phone call lasted just long enough to break Bridgette Medley's heart.

Medley, her husband and her 3-year-old daughter sought shelter from Hurricane Katrina at a downtown hotel yesterday. Water seeped through the ceiling, and wind made the building shudder as they slept on the hard floor of a ballroom. But they were safe.

Her siblings and parents were not. Like about 50,000 other New Orleans residents, they had ignored the mayor's mandatory evacuation order and elected to ride out the storm at the family home in the 8th Ward, a neighborhood of shotgun houses, railroad tracks and industrial canals on the city's east side.

By 7 a.m., the water started rising. Medley's siblings and parents pulled down the stairs to the attic and walked up. At 7:57 a.m., Medley's 48-year-old sister, Stephany Johnson, got through on her cellphone.

"She was panicking," Medley said. "The water was up to their ankles in the house and rising fast — in a house that is 5 feet off the ground to start.

"She said, 'I love you.' " Medley struggled to keep the tears from her eyes. "And then she said, 'We're going to die.' "

Then the line went dead.

Throughout the day, the two sisters maintained a frantic, frustrating conversation in spurts and stops. Hundreds of families found themselves in a similar situation, divided by choices, by chance and by fate. At nightfall, authorities said, 200 people were still stranded on rooftops and more were trapped in attics. Scores more were in similar straits.

New Orleans is surrounded by water, and much of it rests below sea level in a bowl-shaped depression. Even when the sun is shining, the city depends on a complex, often-fragile system of protective levees, as well as enormous pumps that expel water.

The flooding was worst in the city's eastern districts. In the neighborhood where Medley's parents reared four children in a single-story stucco house, the water had nowhere to go, even hours after Katrina passed.

Medley's family home is close to an industrial canal, and serious storms often had brought water to the curb out front.

"But never inside," Medley said. "Never, ever."

That's why Medley's parents and two of her siblings elected to stay. They knew Katrina was big, Medley said. But how bad could it be? The last major hurricane to hit New Orleans directly was Hurricane Betsy, in 1965.

At 9 a.m., Medley was able to get through to her sister again. Now, the water was 3 feet deep. There were two windows in the attic, and if her relatives broke the windows and contorted their bodies just right, they might be able to reach the roof, Medley said. But her parents are in their 70s, she said, and growing increasingly frail.

"That might work for my brother and sister," she said. "But I can't imagine my parents making it out."

By noon, the water was three feet from the first-floor ceiling, and still rising. Medley had enlisted relatives in Texas and Georgia to call the National Guard, in an attempt to get a rescue party to the house.

"No luck," Medley said. "Not yet. All we can do is pray. There's just so much water, and it's still raining hard."

She paused.

"I think ... I mean, I think they're going to drown," she said. "I really do."

At 3 p.m. she got through again.

"What is the water doing?" she asked. "Well, what do you see through the window? Look out the window! What do you see when you look at Mrs. Jones' house?"

The water, her sister reported, appeared to be stable — not dropping, but not rising anymore, either.

"OK," Medley said. "That's good."

At 6 p.m., another call.

Her sister told her she got in touch with a person, "a real, human person," Medley said.

The National Guard was sending a boat. They were saved.

"Praise the Lord!" Medley shouted. "Hallelujah."

The family already had made a pact for the next one — no more splitting up.

"Everybody is leaving next time," Medley said. "More importantly, everybody is leaving together."