Snipers firing at rescue helicopters. Looters -- or people who are just plain hungry -- pushing bags of food through fetid floodwaters. Dead bodies in blankets lying unclaimed in the hot sun. An elderly couple trapped in a truck surrounded by alligators.

These and other heartbreaking, horrific images from New Orleans and the Mississippi coast have unfolded relentlessly on television screens in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina this week, pushing cable television ratings into the stratosphere and gripping millions of viewers -- but also repelling some, who find the gruesome visuals almost unbearable to watch.

"Honestly, I turned on the news last night for a very short time and then I turned it off because I found it very disturbing," said Carolyn Biller, a bartender at Silky's Crow's Nest in Sharpsburg. Biller added that she was nonetheless forced to see more news yesterday after a customer at lunch asked her to turn one of the bar's six televisions to hurricane coverage.

"I could understand if someone had relatives down there they were concerned about, but otherwise I don't see why people need to watch this. It kind of reminds me of people passing a car accident and rubbernecking," she said.

Blanket coverage of disasters, man-made or natural, is a fact of life in our news media-saturated times, and not just because the events are important. They attract huge numbers of viewers -- particularly for cable television -- who might not ordinarily be watching.

In the most recent numbers available, Fox's prime-time audience climbed to 4.2 million on Tuesday night, 112 percent above its Tuesday average, according to Nielsen Media Research. CNN had 3.7 million viewers, an increase of 336 percent. MSNBC had 1.5 million viewers, 379 percent above its average.

Fox News' Dana Klinghofer said more than 50 staffers had been deployed to the Gulf Coast region; Jack Womack, CNN's senior vice president for domestic news, noted that 125 extra personnel were there, although "we've just rotated a large new group of people in." CNN superstar Christiane Amanpour is en route to the area, according to a network news release, as is veteran war correspondent Nic Robertson.

Among those driving up the ratings was Janet Bartlett, 67, of Shaler, who has been carefully monitoring Fox News anchor Shepard Smith's reports from the freeways of New Orleans.

"I turn it [the television] on the first thing in the morning when I wake up until I go to work, and then I turn it on again when I come home," said Bartlett.

Indeed, many television viewers are experiencing what media psychologist Stuart Fischoff describes as classic addiction symptoms.

"Visual imagery involves a much more primitive part of our brain, a monitoring system to sense danger," Fischoff said. "The trouble with this story is that it's not in a resolution stage yet, things are just getting worse. Usually, when we're anxious, we seek information to reduce anxiety, but in this case, we're just increasing it."

Disaster coverage "feeds a demographic of grief junkies, who are tapping away at the remote control like a rat tapping for crack pellets," added Matthew Felling, media director at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Media and Public Affairs. "Not only does misery love company, it also makes for compelling television."

"It just reminds me of how lucky I am," countered Bartlett.

If Hurricane Katrina is drawing an unusually high number of viewers for a natural disaster, it's because the story of a giant storm that brought a legendary American city to its knees is perhaps unprecedented in modern history. The 1900 Galveston, Texas, hurricane may have killed 5,000 people, but no television cameras were there to record the devastation, one expert noted.

Most hurricane stories follow a three-part coverage pattern that's very predictable, said Robert Thompson, a media and popular-culture professor at Syracuse University.

"They start with the blustery, breathless reports that a hurricane is coming, and then when the storm hits the reporters go out there in the wind, and then, inevitably, there's the aftermath, with the extraordinary photos of damage and the interviews with people who are going to leave.

"But Katrina is different," Thompson said. "You are seeing not just the usual post-storm aftermath, but the spectacle of a complex, technologically dependent, civilized society, New Orleans, totally breaking down before your eyes.

"You're seeing law enforcement falling apart and a modern, industrialized city brought to a complete breakdown, and these stories about the looting and the sniper fire are very much playing into this."

Moreover, the city holds a special fascination for viewers, given the role New Orleans -- along with New York City and perhaps San Francisco -- plays in the American consciousness. It's a place of exquisite beauty and squalor and history, where Bourbon Street is a household name, a city about which Louis Armstrong once sang, "Do you know what it means/to miss New Orleans?"

"It is a terrifically romantic place that people kind of cherish, whether they have visited there or not," said George T.M. Shackleford, head of the European art at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, who grew up in northern Louisiana. "It attracts the same kind of respect and awe that people feel for lower Manhattan and Wall Street. It's a different kind of feeling, but the resonance of the place is comparable."

"People have this sense that they're not just watching the death of a city, they're watching the death of a whole culture, and that's far more engaging than just the aftermath of a hurricane," said Fischoff, professor emeritus of media psychology at Cali State University in Los Angeles. He added that the scenes reminded him of Herculaneum and Pompeii after Mount Vesuvius' eruption, or even the movie, "Escape From New York."

If anything, real life has been far more harrowing for reporters covering the story. CNN's Chris Lawrence described being shot at and being constantly approached for help by desperate residents. A visibly shaken Anderson Cooper, anchorman of CNN's "360 Degrees," described scenes of horror in Mississippi Wednesday night and demanded repeatedly, "Where is the federal government?" Fox's Smith chased after a uniformed police officer seeking to find out when help would be on the way.

"The uniformed cop just ignored him and kept on walking," noted Thompson. "You could hear the pleading in Smith's voice, asking the officer what he was going to do, saying, 'Look, you can't just ignore this,' and the cop just kept on walking. It was compelling television."

"This is a rough story for journalists to cover because your journalism textbook has to take a back seat to your moral compass, and the coverage is visceral because of this," added Felling. "When people beg Chris Lawrence for help, they're forcing him to be not just a spectator but a reluctant leader."

Lawrence's colleagues at CNN, charged with handling logistics in the field, say they're fully aware that reporters face not just security and health concerns wading through a landscape steeped with toxins and disease, but psychological ones as well.

Trauma is "a huge issue," said Womack. "We know what they're seeing, and when they come out of the field, we will very closely monitor their situation on the medical front."

Conditions are improving somewhat from earlier this week, when television crews struggled with power failures, lack of fuel and poor cell phone service as well as dwindling supplies of food, water and shelter. On some nights, crews had to sleep in their vehicles.

"The situation changes hourly," said Womack. "We keep waiting for the tipping point, when things start to resolve themselves somewhat, but that hasn't happened yet.

"Clearly, this is the most challenging story we've ever had to manage, at least in the United States."