NEW ORLEANS —With the historic evacuation of 1.9 million people from the Louisiana coast complete, police and National Guardsmen stood watch as rain began to fall on empty streets Sunday night — and even presidential politics took a back seat as the nation waited to see whether Hurricane Gustav would become another Katrina.
The storm was set to crash ashore at midday today, testing the three years of planning and rebuilding that followed Katrina’s devastating blow to the Gulf Coast.
Painfully aware of the failings that led to horrific suffering and more than 1,600 deaths, this time officials moved beyond merely insisting that tourists and residents leave south Louisiana. They threatened arrest, loaded thousands onto buses and warned that anyone who remained behind would not be rescued.
“Looters will go directly to jail. You will not get a pass this time,” said Mayor C. Ray Nagin. “You will not have a temporary stay in the city. You will go directly to the Big House.”
Col. Mike Edmondson, state police commander, said he believed that 90 percent of the population had fled the Louisiana coast. The exodus of 1.9 million people was the largest evacuation in state history, and thousands more had left Mississippi, Alabama and flood-prone southeast Texas.
Late Sunday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal issued one last plea to the roughly 100,000 people left on the coast: “If you’ve not evacuated, please do so. There are still a few hours left.”
Louisiana and Mississippi temporarily changed traffic flow so all highway lanes led away from the coast, and cars were bumper-to-bumper. Stores and restaurants shut down, hotels closed, and windows were boarded up. Some who planned to stay changed their mind at the last second, not willing to risk the worst.
“I was trying to get situated at home. I was trying to get things so it would be halfway safe,” said 46-year-old painter Jerry Williams, who showed up at the city’s Union Station to catch one of the last buses out of town. “You’re torn. Do you leave it and worry about it, or do you stay and worry about living?”
Forecasters said Gustav could strengthen slightly as it marched toward the coast. At 10 p.m. CDT Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said Gustav was centered about 220 miles southeast of New Orleans and was moving northwest at about 16 mph. It had top sustained winds of 115 mph and was likely to stay a Category 3 storm when it made landfall west of New Orleans. Category 3 storms have winds between 111 mph and 130 mph.
Against all warnings, some gambled and decided to face its wrath. On an otherwise deserted commercial block of downtown Lafayette, about 135 miles west of New Orleans, Tim Schooler removed the awnings from his photography studio. He thought about evacuating Sunday before deciding that he was better off riding out the storm at home with his wife, Nona.
“There’s really no place to go. All the hotels are booked up to Little Rock and beyond,” he said. “We’re just hoping for the best.”
There were frightening comparisons between Gustav and Katrina, which flooded 80 percent of New Orleans when the storm surge overtook levees. While Gustav isn’t as large as Katrina, which was a massive Category 5 storm at roughly the same place in the gulf, there was no doubt the storm posed a major threat to a partially rebuilt New Orleans and the region. The storm has already killed at least 94 people on its path through the Caribbean.
Gustav could bring with it a storm surge of up to 14 feet and rainfall of up to 20 inches wherever it hits. By comparison, Hurricane Katrina pushed about 25 feet of surge.
Mindful of the potential for disaster, the Republican Party scaled back its normally jubilant convention — set to kick off as Gustav crashed ashore. President Bush said he would skip the convention altogether, and on Sunday, candidate John McCain visited Jackson, Miss., as his campaign rewrote the script for the convention to emphasize a commitment to helping people.
Surge models suggest large areas of southeast Louisiana, including parts of greater New Orleans, could be flooded by several feet of water. Gustav appears most likely to overwhelm the levees west of the city that have for decades been underfunded and neglected and are years from an update.
The nation’s economic attention was focused on Gustav’s effect on refineries and offshore petroleum-production rigs. The combination of prolonged production interruptions — such as occurred after Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which followed in September 2005 — could trigger rising prices.
Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Chevron Corp. decided not to close its Pascagoula refinery, which processes 330,000 barrels of oil a day.
Billions of dollars were at stake in other wide-ranging economic sectors, including sugar harvesting, the shipping business and tourism. The Mississippi Gaming Commission ordered a dozen casinos to close.
The final train out of New Orleans left with fewer than 100 people on board, while one of the last buses to make the rounds of the city pulled into Union Station empty. By 7 p.m., police were making their final rounds. Every officer in the department was on duty, and 1,200 on the street were joined by 1,500 members of the National Guard.
The only sign of life on St. Bernard Avenue — a four-lane artery through the partially rebuilt Gentilly neighborhood, which flooded during Katrina — was a rooster on the street.
“When the 911 calls start coming in, we’ll know how many people are left in town,” police superintendent Warren Riley said.
