NEW ORLEANS — With a monster hurricane aimed straight at Louisiana’s Gulf Coast and memories of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster seared into their souls, hundreds of thousands of residents and tourists began evacuating the New Orleans region Saturday, leaving a boarded-up and eerily empty city in their wake.
In the Gulf of Mexico less than two days away, Hurricane Gustav was continuing its march toward a Monday landfall expected somewhere west of New Orleans. Gustav was a major Category 4 storm even before it reached the gulf’s warm, fueling waters.
The storm killed more than 80 people when it churned through the Caribbean, and hurricane watches were posted from Galveston, Texas, to the Florida Panhandle.
The evacuation of New Orleans becomes mandatory at 8 a.m. today along the vulnerable west bank of the Mississippi River and at noon on the east bank.
Mayor C. Ray Nagin called Gustav the “mother of all storms” and told residents to “get out of town. This is not the one to play with.”
“This is the real deal, this is not a test,” Nagin said as he issued the order, warning residents that staying would be “one of the biggest mistakes you could make in your life.”
He emphasized that the city will not offer emergency services to anyone who chooses to stay behind.
Nagin did not immediately order a curfew, which would allow officials to arrest residents if they are not on their property.
In 2005, more than 1,800 people died and at least 100,000 homes were destroyed when Katrina’s floodwaters inundated 80 percent of the city, triggering a week-long frenzy of looting and chaos.
This time, city officials ordered downtown hotels closed and choreographed a bus and train convoy to evacuate up to 30,000 city residents without the means to get out themselves.
Gov. Bobby Jindal issued a “contraflow” directive effective at 4 a.m. today, meaning that all major highways would run only outbound from coastal areas.
Police, Guard on patrol
Officials said that at least 1,500 New Orleans police officers, augmented by another 1,500 National Guard troops, were patrolling the city against looters — double the law enforcement presence after Katrina.
“We will be able to pretty much lock down this city,” said New Orleans police Supt. Warren Riley. “People should be confident we will be able to handle this very, very well. We can’t promise nothing will happen, but it certainly will be a tremendous force of law enforcement and military here.”
At the city’s central train and bus station Saturday — in the shadow of the New Orleans Superdome, where tens of thousands of storm victims were stranded without food or water for nearly a week after Katrina — evacuees bused in from staging points across the city.
They were processed and loaded onto buses and trains headed for shelters in Memphis, Tenn., and upstate Louisiana.
Each evacuee received a colored wristband indicating any special medical or assistance needs. There were designated lines for the elderly, the wheelchair-bound and families with young children, as well as ample food and water. There was even a staging area for family pets, which were being caged and loaded into air-conditioned semitrailers destined for the same evacuation cities as their owners.
“Nobody had to tell me twice to get out this time,” said Tasha Smith, 23, as she clutched her 1-year-old son, Michael, while waiting with other family members to board a bus. “We had to get rescued from our roof after Katrina. I wasn’t about to go through anything like that again.”
City officials refused to set up any “shelters of last resort” inside the city, to avoid a repeat of the post-Katrina scenes at the Superdome and the downtown convention center.
Any of the city’s estimated 310,000 residents who ignore orders to leave accept “all responsibility for themselves and their loved ones,” said Jerry Sneed, the city’s emergency preparedness director.
Katrina’s lessons
Nagin, who drew residents’ scorn for failing to help the city’s poorest residents get out before Katrina, said he was pleased with the process Saturday after visiting with some of the evacuees waiting in line to board buses.
“This is night and day from Katrina,” Nagin said in an interview. “Katrina was some hard- earned experience. Now we’re putting that experience to work.”
Much of the city looked empty Saturday, suggesting that most residents were heeding official warnings and getting out well in advance of the storm.
Many evacuees said they knew that the city’s network of protective levees is only partially repaired.
Even if the Army Corps of Engineers completes the work on schedule in 2011, the system will not be strong enough to withstand a Category 4 or 5 hurricane.
In the city’s Lower Ninth Ward, which was completely wiped out when Katrina smashed a levee along the Industrial Canal, a handful of families who had rebuilt their homes could be seen loading up their cars with suitcases and coolers, on their way out.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
