Mayor Orders Total Evacuation of New Orleans as 'Extremely Dangerous' Gustav Nears Category 5

Hurricane Packing 150 Mile-Per-Hour Winds Passes Cuba Into Warm Gulf of Mexico Waters; Forecasters Expect Further Strengthening to Katrina's Level Before Slamming Into Gulf Coast by Monday Night



Hurricane Gustav held steady as a strong Category 4 late Saturday night, with winds of 150 miles per hour as it passed through western Cuba and into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, still on a track to hit the U.S. Gulf Coast. The National Hurricane Center in Miami called the storm "extremely dangerous" and warned that it will intensify further in the gulf's warm waters -- matching, and possibly topping, Hurricane Katrina's strength by the time it makes landfall late Monday night. (Image courtesy The Weather Channel)


(Updated 10 p.m. EDT Saturday, August 30, 2008)

SATURDAY NEWS EXTRA
By Adam Nossiter and Shalia DeWan
The New York Times

NEW ORLEANS — City officials ordered everyone to leave New Orleans beginning at four o'clock Sunday morning — the first mandatory evacuation since Hurricane Katrina flooded the city three years ago — as Hurricane Gustav grew into what the city’s mayor called “the storm of the century” on Saturday and moved toward the Louisiana coast.

Mayor Ray Nagin said Gustav was larger and more dangerous than Katrina, and pleaded with residents to get out or face enormous flooding and life-threatening winds. Thousands of residents left the city, with some boarding trains but most of them leaving by car, causing miles of backups on some highways. Many of the city’s less mobile residents were being ferried from the city aboard buses in a carefully planned evacuation.

The Louisiana State Police announced Saturday night the implementation of "contraflow," in which all of the major highways connecting New Orleans will be converted into one-way highways -- with all traffic heading out of the city -- beginning at 4 a.m. (5 a.m. EDT) Sunday.

“I don’t want to be stuck like I was in Katrina,” said Janice McElveen, who was waiting for a bus in the Irish Channel section, recalling being stranded on the Interstate 10 bridge for five days in 2005.

In the Central City section, families, elderly people and the visibly infirm — those with wheelchairs and canes — lined the sidewalk along Dryades Street for half a long block, waiting for a bus. “After going through Katrina, that ain’t no joke,” said Jody Anderson, an unemployed former cashier, who spent seven days in the fetid conditions of the Superdome following that storm. “It’s not worth it, trying to stay.”

By Saturday afternoon, Gustav had strengthened into a Category 4 hurricane with winds of up to 145 miles per hour as it moved over Cuba toward the Gulf of Mexico. Forecasters declared the storm "extremely dangerous" and said it was certain to become a Category 5, the strongest designation on the Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity, by early Sunday morning.

New Orleans was expected to get at least tropical-storm-force winds of up to 73 mph from Hurricane Gustav by Monday morning, with the center of Gustav most likely to strike the Louisiana coast southwest of here early Tuesday.

Hurricane Likely to Overshadow Republican Convention

The hurricane could arrive on American shores just as the Republican National Convention is beginning in Minnesota, and officials were considering whether they should make changes to the program.

Bush administration officials took pains not to be caught as flat-footed as they were with Katrina. President Bush called governors around the region to assure them of assistance, the White House said, and top federal emergency officials were positioned in the region to guide the response.

Governors Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Rick Perry of Texas announced they would not attend the convention and would remain in their states during the storm. In Washington, White House officials were considering whether to reschedule the president's trip to the convention, where he is scheduled to speak Monday on the opening night.

Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, in an interview taped for broadcast on “Fox News Sunday,” said the convention program might be reduced or suspended for a day or two if the storm turned out to be destructive.

City Warns Residents Who Stay Behind They Face Curfew, Arrest

In a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, residents are not physically forced to leave, but are subject to arrest outside their houses. Officials have also warned that anyone who chooses to stay, as many jaded city residents are expected to do, will not be able to rely on public agencies for emergency assistance.

City officials estimated that 30,000 people may need the bus and train service. One train carried about 1,500 people to Memphis, and 22 buses, with more than 1,100 passengers, had left the city by Saturday afternoon for shelters in Alexandria, Shreveport and other northern Louisiana locations.

Officials made an effort to soothe concerns about looting. Nagin noted that with 1,500 to 2,000 National Guard troops coming to New Orleans, the city would have twice as much law enforcement protection as it had in the days after Hurricane Katrina. In all, 7,000 members of the Louisiana National Guard were mobilized Friday.

Jackie Clarkson, the president of the City Council, said the evacuation was proceeding more smoothly than any she had seen before. “We can save everybody this time,” Ms. Clarkson said.

The state police on Saturday reported moderately heavy traffic on a principal highway north, Interstate 55, though local news reports indicated that jams had already formed on some roads.

Fleeing Residents Pack Trains, Buses

Dozens of people waited outside for buses at 17 collection points all over New Orleans to take them to the Union Passenger Terminal, the train station downtown. From there they would be taken by bus and train to cities in north Louisiana — Shreveport, Alexandria and Monroe — and to Memphis, Tennessee.

They clutched duffle bags, plastic shopping sacks, small children and overstuffed suitcases, vowing to avoid at all costs the still-vivid nightmare of Hurricane Katrina.

The buses arrived promptly at 8 a.m. — a sharp contrast to the chaos and disorganization of three years ago, when the only plan was to jam thousands of people without cars into the Superdome and let others fend for themselves.

“I refuse to go through that again,” said Roxanne Clayton, a photo technician at Walgreens, who was waiting in the Irish Channel neighborhood with her teenage son and 10-year-old daughter. Clayton recalled being stuck in her attic for two days during Hurricane Katrina. “I’d rather play it safe than sorry, because I know what sorry feels like,” she said.

A neighbor from the larger houses up Louisiana Avenue brought doughnuts for those patiently waiting, and many said they were simply grateful for the ride out of town.

State officials prepared an elaborate contraflow system, reversing all lanes of a highway so they lead out of Southern Louisiana beginning Sunday morning. Officials were staging the plans so that those farthest south could exit first.

In St. Bernard Parish, just east of New Orleans, officials ordered a mandatory evacuation beginning at 4 p.m. Saturday, warning residents that curfews would be enforced. The parish was one of the hardest hit in Hurricane Katrina, and many of its residents never returned. Similar orders were given in the parishes of Plaquemines, St. Charles and lower Jefferson, southwest of New Orleans.

A Quarter-Million Cubans Evacuated From West Island

Gustav, which has already killed 81 people in the Caribbean, lashed the western tip of Cuba on Saturday, and the Associated Press reported that 240,000 people were being evacuated from the area. Forecasts of its track said it could strike the Gulf Coast anywhere from the Florida Panhandle on the east to the Texas coast on the west, though the center of the track remained the Louisiana coast well west of New Orleans.

Whatever its exact landing point, storm surges could cause serious damage throughout the region.

Dennis Feltgen, a spokesman for the National Hurricane Center in Miami, emphasized the uncertainty of forecasted landfalls at midday Saturday. “New Orleans will be impacted, but to what degree we don’t know,” Feltgen said. If the center of the storm passes more than 60 miles from the city, “they may not expect hurricane force winds.”

That New Orleans will most likely be east of the center, on “the dirty side of the storm,” means large amounts of rain. In addition, Feltgen said, there is “potential for a significant storm surge. We don’t know how much, or where.”

A Louisiana State University scientist who has been tracking the storm said that the area at greatest risk, under present forecasts, was not New Orleans, but the low-population district between Houma and Lafayette on the state’s south-central coast.

“It’s just like Rita. It’s more of a rural storm than an urban storm,” said Robert Twilley, a professor of oceanography and coastal sciences.

Levees Strengthened Since Katrina, But Work Is Still Unfinished

Experts say that the New Orleans hurricane defenses have been strengthened significantly since the city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina, but the city is still not yet ready to take the punch from a major hurricane.

“The system itself is stronger than it was before Katrina,” said Major Timothy Kurgan, the chief of the public affairs office for the Army Corps of Engineers in New Orleans. He acknowledged, however, that the defenses that the corps has been designing and putting into place to withstand what is known as 100-year flooding are under construction and are only 20 percent complete.

While some $2 billion has been spent so far to patch and upgrade the system, the $13 billion construction program that is designed to bring the city full protection against the kind of flooding that has a one percent chance of occurring in any given year is not scheduled to be complete until 2011.

“It’s a huge undertaking,” he said, and “we’ve made great strides. But we’re not there by any stretch of the imagination.”

In particular, floodgates have been constructed at the end of city drainage canals leading to Lake Pontchartrain, the principal conduits for the fateful surge during Hurricane Katrina. Still, there is no such arrangement on the Industrial Canal, the surge from which destroyed the still-uninhabited Lower Ninth Ward.

In terms of preparation for Hurricane Gustav, Kurgan said, the corps has workers ready to enter its hardened shelters at the floodgates and to respond quickly and in force once the storm has passed. “The Corps of Engineers is ready for this storm,” he said, and will be “able to address whatever this storm brings to us.”

Hospitals, Nursing Homes Act Swiftly to Evacuate

Some institutions — hospitals and nursing homes, where many died during Hurricane Katrina — were taking no chances, already ferrying patients north of the area on Friday.

Amber Hebert of the state transportation department said that 14,000 people had registered for the evacuation program and that about 150 buses were already in use, with 300 school buses to be pressed into service by Saturday afternoon.

At the St. Claude Car Wash, a line of cars stretched down the street, waiting to get leaky tires repaired and flats replaced for the drive out of town. Barry Martin, a United Parcel Service worker waiting, said it was the shortest of several lines he had seen.

His vehicle was empty of luggage; Martin said he would leave Sunday morning, picking his destination based on which direction had the lightest traffic. “If everyone’s heading west,” he said, “I’m going to go to Florida.”

Michelle Barnes, a French Quarter resident, was nearly in tears, worried that she would not be allowed on the bus with her little dog, Jack, who was resting in a black canvas bag. Evacuees had been instructed to keep their pets in a carrying case, but Barnes did not have one. “I just hope,” she said, “because otherwise I won’t leave.”

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Volume III, Number 48
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