NEW ORLEANS — The second day seemed worse than the first: The death toll exceeded 100 — in one Mississippi county — and is certain to rise. Rescue crews acrobatically plucked thousands from the crests of roofs and the brink of death. In New Orleans, levees failed and panic took hold.

New, terrifying floods swamped 80 percent of the city at depths of up to 15 feet. And yet fires raged, fed by leaking gas.

Medics transformed part of the Superdome into a triage center, but water lapped at the edges of the arena. Looters roamed. Martial law was declared, and the governor worked on plans to shut New Orleans — a place close to ruin — and remove everyone still there.

"We've lost our city," said former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial, now serving as president of the National Urban League. "I fear it's potentially like Pompeii."

The awful panorama of Hurricane Katrina's devastation stretched across four states, and a ragtag, numbed army of refugees searched desperately for the bare necessities of life — water, food, shelter and, to escape from it all, gasoline.

"There's nowhere, nowhere to go," said Robert Smith, a truck driver who fled New Orleans with his family of six and ended up stranded on Interstate 10 near Gulfport, Miss. "There's nowhere to eat, get gas or stay."

Water surrounded the road, and it was getting deeper. Closer to New Orleans, over Lake Pontchartrain, the highway lay crumbled.

More than 100 people died in the Biloxi and Gulfport areas of Mississippi, according to Jim Pollard, a Harrison County spokesman. Other county officials said twice that number likely were killed.

"The death toll rises every time we go out," said Joe Spraggins, the county's emergency manager.

Overwhelmed by the number of dead, county workers marked bodies with satellite-based locator devices for later pickup. The county had enough space on refrigerated trucks for 80 bodies. Officials ordered more trucks.

Other deaths were reported in Louisiana, Alabama and — last week — in South Florida.

In Biloxi, authorities and volunteers pulled bodies from 12-foot piles of rubble while hearses and trucks cruised Howard Avenue, assigned to carry the corpses. Five bodies were recovered in five blocks in only a few hours.

"I've never seen anything like this in my life," resident David McCaleb said.

In Biloxi, New Orleans and across the vast expanse of disaster, Coast Guard, National Guard and other crews saved countless victims, sometimes by boat, frequently by air.

Like angels, rescuers floated, fluttered, sailed from the clouds, embraced the needy, lifted them to safety.

$3-a-gallon gas looms by weekend

WASHINGTON — Oil prices surged yesterday and gasoline prices were poised to top $3 a gallon by this weekend as oil companies and federal officials began assessing Hurricane Katrina's damage to the heart of the nation's energy production.

The extent of destruction was still unclear yesterday, as oil companies were having difficulty assessing damage due to power outages, impassable roads and disrupted communications. More than one-third of domestically produced oil normally comes from the Gulf of Mexico.

U.S. benchmark crude oil priced for October delivery rose more than $3 a barrel yesterday to trade as high as $70.90, before closing at $69.81.

The Washington Post

The experience was electric, the vista heartbreaking.

"To be elevated and have a bird's-eye view of the neighborhood that I grew up in and love was awful," said Gene Daymude, an art dealer carried over floods and into a helicopter by a wire basket.

At least 1,500 people were rescued from rooftops and attics in New Orleans alone, and many more needed immediate assistance. For some, however, it will come too late.

"We know that many lives have been lost," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said.

President Bush planned to return to Washington today from his ranch in Crawford, Texas, to oversee the federal response to Hurricane Katrina as aides make arrangements for an expected visit to storm-ravaged areas of the Gulf Coast later this week.

Regional damage estimates ranged well beyond $26 billion.

In New Orleans, two levees failed — one with a breach almost 1 ˝ football fields long.

Water rose suddenly 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.

Information

Washing Away: New Orleans newspaper ran special report predicting disaster: http://www.nola.com/hurricane/?/washingaway/

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

Workers planned to drop sandbags from helicopters into the breaches, but rescue missions took priority and no sandbags were dropped, Mayor C. Ray Nagin said, so the water kept coming.

It could take more than a month to pump the water back out, he said.

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

Nagin told city workers to flee for their lives. Staffers at the Times-Picayune newspaper evacuated their building. Canal Street became a canal.

Still, the Gulfport and Biloxi area of southern Mississippi bore much of the brunt of the storm.

Katrina's 145-mph wind and huge storm surge shattered multimillion-dollar casinos, turned bridges into nothing but pylons, and bulldozed harbors, courthouses, entire business districts in Long Beach, Pass Christian and Moss Point.

"This," Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway said, "is our tsunami."

Several people said they saved themselves by perching in treetops. Huong Tran, 50, and her fiancé were among them. They spent six hours in a live-oak tree.

"I thought I was going to die," Tran said. "The water was over the house."

She prayed to a Buddhist goddess.

"I called to her, 'Help me, help me. I think I'll die.' "

Many perished on Point Cadet, at the southeastern tip of Biloxi's peninsula, officials said. Bodies were being recovered late into the night, and a portable morgue was being brought in to handle the dead.

Authorities feared some victims may have been washed away, never to be found.

In many counties, emergency-operations centers crumbled or were swamped.

In Harrison County, home of Biloxi, 35 people in life jackets swam out of the emergency-operations center. "We haven't heard from them," said Christoper Cirillo, the county's emergency medical services director.

Back in New Orleans, medics converted part of the Superdome — already the steamy home of 10,000 people — into a triage center for scores of the injured and sick, many of them found on rooftops and street corners. Some were sent to hospitals in Baton Rouge.

The narrow, debris-filled streets of the tourist-oriented French Quarter filled with more than 2 feet of water. Terrified by what they heard on the radio, some people ran down the streets, screaming and warning others.

"Get out of town if you can," said Ed Freytag, a city worker at the temporary City Hall complex in the Hyatt Regency.

At the Hyatt Regency, next to the Superdome, floodwaters engulfed cars and blocked passage to the rest of the city.

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

Officials had warned that if Katrina hit New Orleans dead-on, floodwaters could rise up to 20 feet immediately. The storm wobbled slightly eastward, offering a partial reprieve that seemed like ancient history yesterday.

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

People frantically tried to reach the only exit out of town that wasn't flooded — the Crescent City Connector, which leads westward along Highway 90 toward Baton Rouge.

A security guard at a hotel in the French Quarter reported hearing gunshots. He wasn't able to sleep, fearful of increasingly hungry, desperate mobs.

"The situation is untenable," Blanco said. "It's just heartbreaking."

Knight Ridder Newspapers correspondents Audra D.S. Burch and Marc Caputo, Scott Dodd of The Charlotte Observer, and Anita Lee and Don Hammack of the Biloxi Sun Herald contributed to this report.