Hurricane Isaac batters New Orleans

huge quantities of rain on the renowned US jazz city as residents cowered in their homes.
More than half a million people were left without power after the hurricane snapped utility poles and downed power lines.
The National Hurricane Centre said the category one storm had forced a “dangerous storm surge” onto the northern Gulf Coast, with waters mounting to three meters in Louisiana and patches of coastal flooding.
Heavy rains were likely to continue throughout yesterday, it said.
Storm-driven waters spilled over a levee south of New Orleans and inundated a residential area that had been ordered evacuated, a local official said.
The flooding in Plaquemines Parish, part of a tongue of land extending into the Gulf of Mexico south of New Orleans, saw water deluge over levees on the east bank of that strip.
Even a relatively high-lying area that had never flooded in a hurricane is now under 1,5 metres of water, Nungesser told National Public Radio.
Powerful winds knocked over trees and ripped down power lines, leaving some 512,000 people without power, according to Entergy Louisiana, a local utility.
A hurricane warning remained in effect for metropolitan New Orleans, a city known as the Big Easy for its jazz and easy-going lifestyle. — AFP.