HURRICANE KATRINA:DEATH TOLL @ 56

An oil platform broke its mooring causing it to hit a bridge at Mobile, Alabama.

Hurricane Katrina left at least 56 people dead Monday, 50 of them in one Mississippi county, according to The Associated Press, and the toll was expected to climb following one of the most powerful hurricanes to hit the northern Gulf Coast in a half century.
More than 12 hours after making landfall on the Louisiana coast east of New Orleans, Katrina was downgraded to a tropical storm with winds of 60 mph Monday evening.The storm's daylong rampage claimed lives and ravaged property in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, where coastal areas remained under several feet of water.The AP quoted Jim Pollard, a spokesman for the emergency operations center in Mississippi's Harrison County, as saying 50 people were killed in the county, most of them at an apartment complex in the casino resort town of Biloxi.