Ben Sklar, Associated Press The Taylor family is rescued by Bay St. Louis Emergency Management Agency volunteers after their sport utility vehicle was swamped Monday on U.S. 90 in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Click photo for larger image.

By The Associated Press

Across the Gulf Coast rescuers this morning continued to race against time and rising waters to limit the loss of life from Hurricane Katrina.

Rescue workers are being imported to the Gulf Coast from around the country. Emergency workers already on the scene gathered hundreds of people yesterday. They were brought by the truckload into shelters, some in wheelchairs and some carrying babies, with stories of survival and of those who didn't make it.

Here are some of those tales:

BILOXI, Miss. -- Joy Schovest swam for her life, fighting Hurricane Katrina's storm surge and its angry winds, brushing aside debris and floating cars to reach higher ground.

	Rogelio Solis, Associated Press Quietwater Beach Apartments residents Joy Schovest, in blue, and P.J. Ralph, in red, share some tears in front of the remains of the two-story building. Click photo for larger image.

Behind her, at least 30 of her neighbors in the Quiet Water Beach apartments were dying, trapped in their crumbling two-story building as it was swept away with much of this Mississippi coast community Monday.

"We grabbed a lady and pulled her out the window and then we swam with the current," said Schovest, 55, breaking into tears. "It was terrifying. You should have seen the cars floating around us. We had to push them away when we were trying to swim."

The only remaining evidence of the Quiet Water Beach apartments was a concrete slab surrounded by a heap of red bricks that were once the building's walls. A crushed red toy wagon, jewelry, clothing and twisted boards were mixed in with the debris. The four-lane road that separated the building from the beachfront was buckled and covered with rubble.

The lucky ones in the Quiet Water Beach apartment building and other vulnerable areas of Biloxi described a scene of pandemonium as they fled the rising water. When asked why they ignored evacuation orders, some said they did not think the storm would be that bad; others would not give a reason.

	Rogelio Solis, Associated Press Joy Schovest talks with a friend yesterday from outside the demolished apartment building. Click photo for larger image.

Apartment tenant Landon Williams, a 19-year-old construction worker, said he and his grandmother and uncle ran from the crumbling building as the storm hit. As they later swam through the swirling water and debris, "we watched the apartments disintegrate. You could hear the big pieces of wood cracking and breaking apart."

He said the winds flung two-by-fours and drywall.

"I lost everything. We can't even find my car," he said. "I'm looking through this wreckage to see if I can find anything that's mine. If not, I'm moving on. I think I'll move on to North Carolina and do some work over there. I can't take it here anymore -- not after this."

Williams said six of his neighbors in the building who remained behind also survived. "As the second story collapsed, they climbed onto the roof and part of it floated away and they floated to a house that made it," he said.

The tragedy at the apartment building represented the biggest known cluster of deaths caused by Katrina.

Joe Spraggins, civil defense director for Harrison County, home to Biloxi and Gulfport, said the county's death toll was at least 100, and officials were "very, very worried that this is going to go a lot higher."

NEW ORLEANS -- Katrina appeared to hit eastern New Orleans and neighboring St. Bernard Parish especially hard, submerging homes in water that topped 10 feet in some areas.

	Bill Feig, The Baton Rouge Advocate via AP U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-LA, views flooding during a helicopter tour of New Orleans. Click photo for larger image.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, viewing the damage in a helicopter, quietly traced the sign of the cross across her head and chest as she looked out at St. Bernard Parish, where only roofs peaked out from the water.

"The whole parish is gone," Landrieu said.

The helicopter view of the devastation revealed people standing on black rooftops baking in the sunshine while waiting for rescue boats. A row of desperately needed ambulances were lined up on the interstate, water blocking their path. Roller coasters jutted out from the water at a Six Flags amusement park. Hundreds of inmates were seen standing on a highway because the prison had been flooded.

Trees uprooted by their stumps were tossed about like twigs, some onto houses and others across streets, dragging stoplights and power lines down with them.

"It's completely gone," Landrieu repeated later, in disbelief.

NEW ORLEANS -- Evelyn Turner has lived with Xavier Bowie for 16 years. She couldn't find anyone to take them out of New Orleans, so she decided to stay home and hope the storm would spare them. The decision was made easier by the fact Bowie was in the final stages of lung cancer and could not be easily moved.

Yesterday, with no phone and only a small tank of oxygen left, Turner slogged out into the streets for help.

By the time she got back, Bowie was dead.

Turner and others wrapped his body in sheet, lay him on a makeshift bier of two-by-fours and plywood, and floated him down to the main road.

For more than an hour, Turner waited, Bowie's body resting on the grassy median as car after car passed, waves created in their wake threatening to wash over the corpse.

Finally, about three hours after Bowie died, a passing flatbed truck driver agreed to take the body to a hospital.

BAYOU La BATRE, Ala. -- As floodwaters receded along the Alabama coast yesterday cement slabs were the only sign of scores of homes. Boats were scattered across the landscape, including a container ship blown ashore, still carying a load of what were once new cars.

	Rob Carr, Associated Press Shrimp boats were scattered across docks and blown inland by winds from Hurricane Katrina as the storm passed through Bayou La Batre, Ala. Click photo for larger image.

A 100-foot shrimp boat lay smoldering on its side. People searched for swept-away keepsakes.

"It's over for a lot of people here," Dale Wade, owner of the shrimp boat, said as he surveyed the damage. "We're going to need some help."

Despite the property loss, the only two hurricane-related deaths in Alabama were the result of a car accident in heavy rain in Washington County. That helped the shrimper put his personal loss in perspective.

"We're all alive," said Wade. "That's all that really matters to us."

NEW ORLEANS -- At ground level in the Crescent City, survivors swapped stories of triumph over the storm.

"Oh my God, it was hell," said Kioka Williams, who had to hack through the ceiling of the beauty shop where she worked as floodwaters rose in New Orleans' low-lying Ninth Ward. "We were screaming, hollering, flashing lights. It was complete chaos."

Frank Mills was in a boarding house in the same neighborhood when water started swirling up toward the ceiling and he fled to the roof. Two elderly residents never made it out, and a third was washed away trying to climb onto the roof.

"He was kind of on the edge of the roof, catching his breath," Mills said. "Next thing I knew, he came floating past me."

CULLMAN, Ala. -- Donyelle Jean Jacques left New Orleans Saturday morning, one of 49 members of her family trying to flee Hurricane Katrina.

When the family is finally able to return, there will be 50.

As the family drove north in an eight-car caravan in Alabama, Jacques, who was pregnant and past her due date, started having labor pains.

Her boyfriend, Wilbert Joseph, said he kept turning on the car's caution lights to try to let other family members know what was going on.

At 4:07 p.m. Monday, Jacques gave birth to an 8 pound, 10 ounce girl named Jade Leshelle Joseph at Cullman Regional Medical Center.

Family members said among the belongings likely destroyed by the flood waters back home was a new set of baby furniture covered with Looney Tunes characters, bought in anticipation of Jade's birth.

NEW ORLEANS -- Dozens of looters ripped open the steel gates on clothing and jewelry stores in New Orleans, some packing plastic garbage cans with loot to float down the street.

	Matt Rourke, Austin American-Statesman via AP Police officer J.J. Jacob holds residents at bay at a Walgreens on Canal Street in New Orleans as food and medical supplies were being gathered from the drug store for sick people at the Ritz-Carlton hotel. Click photo for larger image.

One man, who had about 10 pairs of jeans draped over his left arm, was asked if he was salvaging things from his store.

"No," the man shouted, "that's EVERYBODY'S store!"

Looters at a Wal-Mart brazenly loaded up shopping carts with items including microwaves, coolers and knife sets.

Others walked out of a sporting goods store on Canal Street with armfuls of shoes and football jerseys.

Officials said that looting wasn't the primary concern, acknowledging some residents simply were searching for food.

"We found people are taking food because people are hungry," said New Orleans Police Superintendent Eddie Compass. "We'll deal with the looting afterward. Human life is our top priority."

HOUSTON -- Some hotels are relaxing their policies, allowing Hurricane Katrina evacuees to keep their pets with them, while resorts and kennels have made extra room for cat and canine refugees.

	Jessica Kourkounis, Associated Press Emma Kaltenbach, 77, her family and their dog watch news about Hurricane Katrina at the Lexington Hotel in Houston. The family was evacuated from their home in Metarie, La. Click photo for larger image.

A Great Dane, a poodle and a hound dog all roamed the lobby of the downtown Hilton Americas hotel in Houston on Monday.

"They were barking this morning," said hotel spokeswoman Anna Drake, who estimated more than 100 animals, including birds, hamsters and rabbits, were now guests at the hotel. "There are dogs throughout our lobby kind of hanging out with their owners. It's a zoo here."

At the Prestonwood Kennels Pet Resort in Houston, owner Guinnette Peebles turned her two-car, air-conditioned garage into expanded kennel space for about 20 dogs kept in crates. If space runs out there, Peebles says she'll start stacking crates in her kitchen.

"These people are devastated; they have no place to go. We're seeing a lot of people in a bind coming up this way," she said. "You just have to be able to help these people. They're handing you their well-loved pet. You can't turn them away."