Torrential rain and intense winds blasted Louisiana as Hurricane Gustav neared New Orleans and the Gulf Coast Monday after forcing nearly two million people to flee.
New Orleans was locked down and the streets completely empty as emergency workers who remained behind hunkered down in safe buildings on high ground.
Power went out for many areas of coastal Louisiana, according to media reports, with rains that witnesses described as "horizontal". With landfall imminent, police and national guard deployed to New Orleans to prevent looting also pulled back off the streets for safety.
At 8:00 am (1300 GMT) the eye of the Category Two storm was just southwest of Grand Isle, Louisiana, and 80 miles (150 kilometers) south-southwest of New Orleans, pummelling the marshy Mississippi river delta coastline with winds of 110 miles (175 kilometers) per hour.
Despite a slight weakening of Gustav as it neared the coast, forecasters warned of an "extremely dangerous" surge of up to 4.2 meters (14 feet), not as high as earlier predicted but still enough to worry locals after Hurricane Katrina burst New Orleans' levees in 2005 and flooded the city for days.
Fearing a repeat of the Katrina disaster, thousands of troops, emergency workers and National Guard troops were positioned in New Orleans after what is being called the biggest evacuation in US history.
Three critically ill people were reported to have died as they were being moved from the danger zone.
Oil production in the crucial US oil-and-gas region was shut down, the Republican party suspended the start of its presidential election convention and President George W. Bush headed for Texas to monitor emergency preparations for Gustav, which has killed more than 80 people in Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.
Louisiana officials said there were about 750 National Guard troops in New Orleans if a new rescue operation was needed. Mayor Ray Nagin on Sunday ordered a curfew and vowed to throw looters into prison.
"This is a serious storm," Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said in a final appeal to the people who remained in New Orleans despite government warnings.
People in the state capital of Baton Rouge and other inland areas have been warned to watch for storm-spawned tornados.
Military and civilian disaster relief operations were prepared , with memories still fresh of the destruction wrought by Katrina and the government's botched response.
Katrina made landfall near New Orleans on August 29, 2005, smashing poorly-built levees surrounding the city and causing massive floods that destroyed tens of thousands of homes and killed nearly 1,800.
Mayor Nagin told local television that the city had become a "ghost town" after a massive evacuation campaign, and that only about 10,000 residents remained.
Some of those who left said they felt reassured.
"The mayor assured us our property will be safe," Wilson Patterson, 48, said as he prepared to board a bus with wheelchair-bound 84-year-old Earline Martin.
New Orleans was locked down and the streets completely empty as emergency workers who remained behind hunkered down in safe buildings on high ground.
Power went out for many areas of coastal Louisiana, according to media reports, with rains that witnesses described as "horizontal". With landfall imminent, police and national guard deployed to New Orleans to prevent looting also pulled back off the streets for safety.
At 8:00 am (1300 GMT) the eye of the Category Two storm was just southwest of Grand Isle, Louisiana, and 80 miles (150 kilometers) south-southwest of New Orleans, pummelling the marshy Mississippi river delta coastline with winds of 110 miles (175 kilometers) per hour.
Despite a slight weakening of Gustav as it neared the coast, forecasters warned of an "extremely dangerous" surge of up to 4.2 meters (14 feet), not as high as earlier predicted but still enough to worry locals after Hurricane Katrina burst New Orleans' levees in 2005 and flooded the city for days.
Fearing a repeat of the Katrina disaster, thousands of troops, emergency workers and National Guard troops were positioned in New Orleans after what is being called the biggest evacuation in US history.
Three critically ill people were reported to have died as they were being moved from the danger zone.
Oil production in the crucial US oil-and-gas region was shut down, the Republican party suspended the start of its presidential election convention and President George W. Bush headed for Texas to monitor emergency preparations for Gustav, which has killed more than 80 people in Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.
Louisiana officials said there were about 750 National Guard troops in New Orleans if a new rescue operation was needed. Mayor Ray Nagin on Sunday ordered a curfew and vowed to throw looters into prison.
"This is a serious storm," Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said in a final appeal to the people who remained in New Orleans despite government warnings.
People in the state capital of Baton Rouge and other inland areas have been warned to watch for storm-spawned tornados.
Military and civilian disaster relief operations were prepared , with memories still fresh of the destruction wrought by Katrina and the government's botched response.
Katrina made landfall near New Orleans on August 29, 2005, smashing poorly-built levees surrounding the city and causing massive floods that destroyed tens of thousands of homes and killed nearly 1,800.
Mayor Nagin told local television that the city had become a "ghost town" after a massive evacuation campaign, and that only about 10,000 residents remained.
Some of those who left said they felt reassured.
"The mayor assured us our property will be safe," Wilson Patterson, 48, said as he prepared to board a bus with wheelchair-bound 84-year-old Earline Martin.
"We don't want to get caught up in the Katrina craziness," he said, recalling the lawlessness that swept New Orleans in 2005.
Jindal said rescue teams were in place.
"We will begin search-and-rescue operations as soon as we safely can. That would be when winds are below 140 miles per hour," he said, which probably will occur "late Monday."
"We've got... boots on the ground, eyes on the ground. So before that, even before we can get into the air, before we can get boats on the water, we do have people on the ground to make sure that we're doing everything that we can to save every single life."
Jindal told reporters there were unconfirmed reports that three critically ill patients died while being transported to safer ground.
"They had to weigh the risk between sheltering in place and evacuating and made the decision they thought was best for their patients," he said.
Agence France-Presse - 9/1/2008 2:41 PM GMT
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