'The Big Easy' Breathes Easier As it Avoids a Direct Hit By Gustav

Hurricane Now a Tropical Storm, But Still Drenches Louisiana With Heavy Rains; Surge Splashes Over Industrial Canal Levees, But Reinforced Walls Hold; East Coast Keeps Wary Eye on Hanna, Despite Weakening to Tropical Storm



Swollen water sloshes over the side of a levee Monday on the Industrial Canal in New Orleans as Hurricane Gustav slammed into the Gulf Coast, driving a surge of water to the lip of the levees protecting the below-sea-level Crescent City. But after several tense hours, the levees held fast, to the great relief of New Orleans city officials and the Army Corps of Engineers, which reinforced the levees after a catastrophic failure during Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of the city. (Photo: Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse)


(Posted 5:30 a.m. EDT Tuesday, September 2, 2008)
(Updated 6:00 p.m. EDT Tuesday, September 2, 2008)

TUESDAY NEWS EXTRA
By Howard Witt
Chicago Tribune

NEW ORLEANS — In the end, it was just a glancing blow. And for that, the Big Easy let out a big sigh of relief.

A weakened Hurricane Gustav blew into southern Louisiana on Monday morning as a less-fearsome Category 2 storm, bearing 110-mile-per-hour winds that cracked tree branches, knocked out power to a million homes and triggered localized flooding, but apparently spared the vulnerable New Orleans levee system.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Hanna, the first of three tropical storms lined up across the Atlantic, was expected to strengthen back into a Category 1 hurricane Tuesday night -- roughly 24 hours after weakening -- and is expected to make landfall somewhere on the East Coast between Florida and North Carolina before Friday evening, forecasters said.

Hanna could come ashore as a Category 1 storm, with winds of 80 to 85 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami. Florida Governor Charlie Crist declared a state of emergency Tuesday to get the state ready for Hanna, the Associated Press reported. Floridians could expect flash floods and wind gusts of up to 111 mph, he said.

Following Hanna is Tropical Storm Ike, which formed Monday, and is forecast to cross into the Caribbean as a hurricane on Saturday or Sunday. Tropical Storm Josephine formed Tuesday near the West African coast and is heading west, but is not forecast at this time to make landfall.

Gustav Slams Into Major Oil and Gas Port

Gustav made landfall just before 10 a.m. EDT Monday near the coastal community of Cocodrie, Louisiana, about 70 miles southwest of New Orleans in the heart of the state's fishing and oil industry. Forecasters had feared that the hurricane could strike the coast as a catastrophic Category 4 storm—a warning that spurred a massive inland evacuation of up to 95 percent of coastal residents over the weekend.

As Gustav weakened to a tropical storm late Monday, dumping heavy rains over central Louisiana on its way into Texas, officials cautioned that storm surges still could buffet the New Orleans region into Tuesday, putting stress on fragile flood defenses that still have not been fully repaired since their destruction during Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

But with every passing hour, as the winds subsided and the clouds thinned, New Orleans seemed to be mostly dry.

After Gustav, there was no deluge.

Nevertheless, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who orchestrated a successful effort to evacuate nearly all of his city's 310,000 residents ahead of Gustav, warned citizens not to attempt to return home Tuesday because of remaining power outages, sewer problems and debris littering most streets.

"There's damage throughout the city," Nagin said at a news conference Monday night. "The city is not quite ready for our citizens to return."

About half the city was without power as dusk fell, but a driving tour of several neighborhoods indicated that few homes had suffered any significant wind damage.

Police said they had arrested just two looters through Monday evening, in stark contrast to the lawlessness that pervaded the city after Katrina.

Few Deaths Reported, Thanks to Mass Evacuations

Casualties from Gustav appeared to be few: Authorities reported seven traffic deaths related to the storm, including four people killed in Georgia when their car struck a tree, and two other evacuees who died in Baton Rouge when a tree struck the house where they were staying.

There was less information about the fate of smaller coastal communities in the Cajun country southwest of New Orleans, where Gustav came ashore.

In those low-lying regions, where natural wetland barriers have been eroded by oil and gas drilling, officials warned that damage was likely much greater.

"We don't expect the loss of life, certainly, that we saw in Katrina," Federal Emergency Management Agency Deputy Director Harvey Johnson told The Associated Press. "But we are expecting a lot of homes to be damaged, a lot of infrastructure to be flooded, and damaged severely."

Communications Down at Port Fourchon

State officials said they had not been able to reach anyone at Port Fourchon, a vital hub for the energy industry where huge amounts of oil and gas are piped inland to refineries. Gustav's eye passed about 20 miles from the port.

The Gulf Coast is home to nearly half of the nation's oil-refining capacity, and if either the onshore or offshore energy infrastructure suffered major damage from Gustav, gasoline prices could shoot up.

Risk Management Solutions, a major insurance-risk firm based in London, estimated that Gustav might have caused $1 billion to $3 billion in damage to oil platforms and wells, while insured losses for damage to residential and commercial properties might range as high as $7 billion.

"Offshore damage was not as extensive as originally anticipated," Christine Ziehmann, a company official, said in a statement.

International oil markets seemed to have shrugged off the storm. Oil prices fell $4 to around $111 a barrel as the storm weakened.

A Few Tense Hours, But Industrial Canal Levee Holds

In New Orleans, the closest call came at midday, when wind-driven water started spilling over a flood wall along on the west side of the Industrial Canal bordering New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward.

Televised pictures of the swollen canal overflowing its banks summoned ghastly memories of Katrina, when multiple levee failures flooded 80 percent of the city, leading to the deaths of more than 1,800 people and the loss of at least 100,000 homes.

The flood wall on the eastern side of the Industrial Canal failed during Katrina, causing a devastating flood that destroyed the historic, largely African-American neighborhood as well as adjacent St. Bernard Parish.

But officials of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said there had been no breaches, either in that flood wall or anywhere else along the complex, 350-mile levee network protecting the New Orleans metropolitan area, and they said they were confident that the system would continue to hold—even though work to fully repair Katrina's damage will not be completed until 2011.

"We're confident in the stability of that [Industrial Canal] wall," which was fortified after Katrina, said Karen Durham-Aguilera, director of the $15 billion Army Corps rebuilding project.

Gustav blew in packing much less of a punch than Katrina, which arrived as a Category 3 storm with a monstrous 27-foot storm surge. Gustav's surge was predicted to top out at 14 feet.

Bush Hails 'Much Better' Response to Gustav

President Bush, who skipped the Republican National Convention in Minnesota to monitor Gustav from Texas, applauded local, state and federal efforts to cope with the storm. The president was widely faulted for the federal government's slow response to Katrina.

"The coordination on this storm is a lot better ... than during Katrina," Bush said, noting how the governors of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas had been working in concert. "It was clearly a spirit of sharing assets, of listening to somebody's problems and saying, 'How can we best address them?' "

The nearly two million people who left coastal Louisiana under mandatory evacuation orders issued by every southern parish watched TV coverage of the hurricane from shelters and hotel rooms scattered hundreds of miles away.

Many were enduring an anxious wait to learn the fate of their homes.

Cong Doan, 34, of Chauvin, a vulnerable coastal fishing town near where Gustav made landfall, sat playing cards with his wife and several of his six children on cots at a shelter in Alexandria, Louisiana.

"I just keep telling myself, whatever happens, happens. There's not much to do," he said. "We're going to go back. But whether we have anything to go back to, I don't know."

Hanna, Ike Expected to Strengthen

At 2 p.m. EDT, Hanna was just below hurricane strength, with sustained winds of 70 mph, and brushing the southeast coast of Great Inagua Island in the Bahamas, the National Hurricane Center said. It was expected to strengthen and move to toward the northwest late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Hanna's line of fire could include the Atlantic coast from Florida to Massachusetts, according to the hurricane center's long-range forecast map. Charleston, South Carolina, appears in the middle of this "cone of uncertainty," with Hanna potentially making landfall there Friday.

Ike is forecast to strengthen into a hurricane Tuesday night and could strike the Turks and Caicos islands just south of the Bahamas -- already hit by Hanna on Monday -- by this weekend.

The history of hurricanes that have been where Hanna is now might argue against it heading toward the southeastern United States. None of the September storms that passed within 200 miles of the current location have gone there, with most heading into the Gulf of Mexico and others going to New England or Nova Scotia.

Still, forecasters said, "the model guidance is remarkably well clustered" in support of its forecasted path for Hanna.

(Tribune reporter Angela Rozas in Alexandria, Louisiana, and CNN contributed to this report.)

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