Highways out of New Orleans have been crammed since before dawn as people scurried to escape a monster storm that could slam the Louisiana coast as early as midday Monday.

The state's governor, Bobby Jindal, said that more than a million people were on the move because of Gustav's destructive potential.

Officials are carefully watching whether Gustav strengthens as it crosses the warm water of the Gulf of Mexico.

A slightly weakened Gustav -- still a dangerous Category 3 storm with winds near 125 miles (205 kilometers) per hour -- battered Cuba Sunday after claiming at least 81 lives in its tear across the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, desperate to avoid a replay of the 2005 Katrina catastrophe, ordered the city emptied in the face of what he called "the storm of the century" and roads quickly filled with fleeing residents.

"Get out of town," Jefferson parish president Aaron Broussard said in a public announcement Sunday morning. "Have the courage to disconnect yourself from your material things. You cannot protect yourself against what Mother Nature is going to throw at us."

Jefferson Parish includes the West Bank, where a "storm surge" of water pushed ashore by hurricane winds is expected to easily wash over levees guarding that area.

Weather models indicate a surge could be more than 20 feet (almost three meters) high, double the height of levees on the West Bank.

"We are going to see storm surge on the West Bank like we have never seen before," said Jefferson parish councilman Chris Roberts. "Now is the time to sound the alarm."

FEMA mobile homes or trailers, still housing people displaced by Katrina's destruction, were being hurriedly evacuated.

Louisiana director of homeland security Jerry Snead says 10,000 people were bused or taken by train out of New Orleans parish by Saturday night and that he expects the figure to reach 30,000 by the time they cut off "assisted evacuation" late Sunday.

Gun shops saw a run of customers through the weekend, indicating many were arming themselves for the lawlessness that marked Katrina's aftermath.

Local authorities promise intense police and National Guard presence and vow to arrest anyone caught roaming evacuated areas.

Charles Abbyad screwed plywood over windows and doors on ground floor of his 3-story New Orleans home. He pored over maps Saturday night, tracked the direction of the storm on his laptop into Sunday morning. He plans to hunker down and ride out the storm while his wife, Jill, reluctantly decided to leave with friends.

"I'm all American, but my family history is Palestinian so we are used to evacuating," Abbyad said as he screwed plywood to windows.

Mitch Landrieu, the Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana, said that "New Orleans evacuated 10,000 people Saturday and the estimate is 30,000 people needed to leave.

"The challenge seems to be that people aren't listening or they are listening and deciding to stay. All the coastal parishes are in very significant harm's way. While you can, it is critical to move," Landrieu warned.

"If people are scared, they should be scared. This is not a drill, we just need you to move now," he stressed.

In Cuba, Gustav tore off roofs, flattened buildings and plunged communities into darkness as it smashed through the Isle of Youth, then tore across mainland Cuba southwest of Havana, which has a population of more than two million. There were no immediate reported deaths in Cuba.

The storm lost some of its punch in the process, with US officials downgrading it from four to three.

Packing sustained winds of 120 mph (195 kmh) at 1500 GMT, the US National Hurricane Center said Gustav's eye was about 325 miles (520 km) southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River, as the storm moved northwest about 17 mph (28 km/h) and was expected to strengthen.

On this track Gustav will make landfall on the northern Gulf coast on Monday, the NHC added, warning "an extremely dangerous storm surge of 18 to 25 feet (more than six meters) above normal tidal levels is expected near and to the east of where the center of Gustav crosses the northern Gulf Coast."

President George W. Bush was no longer due to travel to the Republican Convention Monday as Hurricane Gustav closes in on the US Gulf Coast, the White House said in Washington. The Katrina catastrophe was a major political disaster for his administration.

Republican White House hopeful John McCain and his running-mate Sarah Palin also said they would suspend their normal election campaign and visit to Mississippi to inspect preparations for Gustav's arrival.

Major oil producers BP, ConocoPhillips and Shell on Thursday evacuated workers from their facilities in the Gulf where nearly a quarter of US crude oil installations are located.

"If one major deep-water production platform is destroyed, you're talking about a billion dollar or more loss," said Rice University engineering professor Satish Nagarajaiah.

"If it's multiple rigs and platforms in a variety of water depths, then we're talking billions of dollars."

Cuban national television reported that the scene on the Isle of Youth was one of devastation after the monster storm ground its way across the low-lying island of fishing villages, factories and citrus farms.

Homes were under water, warehouses toppled, and roads washed away on the Isle, state television said, adding there were some injuries though no immediate reports of deaths.

More than 250,000 were evacuated from western parts of mainland Cuba before the storm hit, the Cuban weather service said.

Earlier Gustav's path of destruction left 66 dead and 10 missing in Haiti. In neighboring Dominican Republic, the death toll stood at eight, while in Jamaica the toll stood at seven, with many thousands displaced.

Gustav loomed just after the third anniversary of Katrina, the deadliest US natural disaster in almost eight decades. More than 1,800 people were killed by the hurricane and related flooding, authorities say.

Community
Email This Article
Comment On This Article

Share This Article With Planet Earth

del.icio.us	Digg	Reddit
YahooMyWeb	Google	Facebook

Related Links
Bringing Order To A World Of Disasters
When the Earth Quakes
A world of storm and tempest

Memory Foam Mattress Review

SPACE MEDIA NETWORK PROMOTIONS Solar Energy Solutions Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison ... Newsletters :: SpaceDaily :: SpaceWar :: TerraDaily :: Energy Daily XML Feeds :: Space News :: Earth News :: War News :: Solar Energy News