New Orleans bracing for big test from Gustav
U. S., local officials say they’re ready, this time
NEW ORLEANS — With Hurricane Gustav bearing down on this still-recovering region, officials on Friday took the first steps in extensive evacuation plans, hoping the lessons learned three years ago during Hurricane Katrina will avert the chaos that followed.
Officials in Washington and in New Orleans expressed confidence massive new floodgates would provide adequate protection against Gustav, which had top winds of 80 mph late Friday and is expected to hit the Gulf Coast by early Tuesday. Officials also predicted that plans for removing residents, maintaining public order and avoiding disruption of oil production in the Gulf would go smoothly.
“There are phenomenal improvements at the federal level, at the state level and local level that we’re going to benefit from, and [that] you’ll be able to watch and see as a result,” said Harvey E. Johnson Jr., deputy administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Still, implementation of the blueprints drawn up after Katrina, which roared ashore exactly three years ago Friday, remains incomplete. Most notably, a flood-control system designed to protect vulnerable low-lying areas such as the Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish is still years from being finished.
Along the Gulf Coast, most commemorations of the Katrina anniversary were canceled because of Gustav, but in New Orleans a horse-drawn carriage took the bodies of Katrina’s last seven unclaimed victims to burial.
The U. S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Gustav could grow to a Category 3 storm, with winds above 111 mph, by the time it hits the Gulf Coast next week. Gustav could strike anywhere from the Florida Panhandle to Texas, but forecasters said there is a better-than- even chance that New Orleans will get slammed by at least tropical-storm-force winds.
As much as 80 percent of the Gulf of Mexico’s oil and gas production could be shut down as a precaution if Gustav enters as a major storm, weather research firm Planalytics predicted. Oil companies have already evacuated hundreds of workers from offshore platforms.
Retail gas prices rose Friday for the first time in 43 days as analysts warned that a direct hit on Gulf energy infrastructure could send pump prices hurtling toward $5 a gallon. Crude oil prices ended slightly lower in a volatile session as some traders feared supply disruptions and others bet the government will release supplies from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
The city of New Orleans said late Friday that it had completed the relocation of more than 2,100 prison inmates and that medical evacuations of hospitals and nursing homes were under way.
Louisiana began moving vulnerable populations such as nursing home residents and hospital patients Friday, Johnson said. Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama will begin urging residents to move inland today, followed by mandatory evacuation orders for low-lying areas Sunday, he said.
President Bush declared a state of emergency for Louisiana and Texas, clearing the way for federal aid in addition to state and local efforts, officials said. Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas have also issued their own emergency and disaster declarations and alerted National Guard units.
Officials were not the only ones caught unprepared when Katrina hit in 2005, eventually causing more than 1,800 deaths and flooding 80 percent of New Orleans. Many residents did not heed the warnings about the danger of the approaching storm. This time, however, seems different.
While government agencies and schools put emergency plans into effect, hurricane-hardened residents began filling their cars with gasoline, lining up at banks to get cash, stocking up on food and water, and boarding up their homes.
While the evacuation machinery — both public and private — seems to be in much better shape than it was three years ago, flood protection remains a work in progress. The federal government has spent more than $2 billion to shore up the region’s vulnerable levee system, but more than $10 billion in protection projects remains under construction or on the drawing board, according to the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The most significant improvement since Katrina has been the construction of massive floodgates at the mouths of New Orleans’ three main drainage canals. Unprotected during Katrina, the canals filled with water forced in by a storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain to the north, collapsing the floodwalls that line the canals.
Work has not started on a floodgate to block water from surging into the huge Industrial Canal, a shipping corridor that cuts through the city’s Ninth Ward. An even more ambitious project to close the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a ship channel that moves through eastern New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish, is years away.
Meanwhile, Gustav killed four people Friday in a day-long march across Jamaica, where it ripped off roofs and downed power lines. About 4,000 people were displaced from their homes, with about half relocated to shelters. At least 59 people died in Haiti and eight in the Dominican Republic.
Gustav reached the Cayman Islands late Friday and was on track to hit Cuba’s cigar country before heading into the Gulf by Sunday.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
