Light a Candle for New Orleans

It may not be there in the morning.

"For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare flooding a big storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl-shaped city bounded by the half-mile-wide Mississippi River and massive Lake Pontchartrain.

"As much as 10 feet below sea level in spots, the city is as the mercy of a network of levees, canals and pumps to keep dry.

"Scientists predicted Katrina could easily overtake that levee system [and] leave more than 1 million people homeless.

" 'All indications are that this is absolutely worst-case scenario,' Ivor van Heerden, deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, said Sunday afternoon."