By BRUCE MEYERSON AP Business Writer
The statistics make it look as if someone just flicked a switch and turned off the Internet, and that's not too far from the hurricane truth. In the battered Biloxi-Gulfport region of Mississippi, where about 160,000 people might go online during a typical weeknight, Internet usage had fallen "below reportable levels" by Tuesday, according to the tracking firm comScore Networks.
The number of people logging on in New Orleans, usually 700,000 on an average weeknight, plunged 90 percent after Hurricane Katrina sent most of those Internet users fleeing and knocked out most of the telephone and electrical lines needed to connect any computer not submerged in the floods.
On a more heartening note, comScore also reported Friday that online traffic to the RedCross.org is soaring: On Wednesday, nearly 1 million people visited the Web site, more than 32 times the average daily visit during the prior week.
The hurricane's impact was also evident on the nation's long-distance phone networks, where the number of calls has jumped this week. However, with millions of local phone lines out of service in the Gulf region, the number of long-distance calls that aren't reaching their destination has surged as well.
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