Bracing for Gustav

Storm of century set to batter US

WASHINGTON: Desperate to avoid a repeat of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, residents of New Orleans fled their city yesterday as a new hurricane hailed as 'the mother of all storms' threatened the already disaster-scarred metropolis.
Hurricane Gustav, though slightly weakened, has already killed more than 80 people in the Caribbean, and if current forecasts hold up, it should make landfall today somewhere between eastern Texas and western Mississippi.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, keen to prevent a replay of the Katrina catastrophe, ordered the city be evacuated yesterday in the face of what he called 'the storm of the century'. Roads out of New Orleans were jammed with fleeing residents.
In Cuba, Gustav's screaming winds, packing an intensity of nearly 220kmh, tore off roofs, flattened buildings and plunged communities into darkness as they smashed through the Isle of Youth, then tore across mainland Cuba south-west of Havana, which has a population of more than two million.
Gustav lost some of its punch in the process, prompting officials in the United States to downgrade it from Category 4 status to Category 3.
Cuban civil defence chief Ana Isla said there were 'many people injured' but there were no reports of deaths.
In tourist-friendly Old Havana, heavy winds and rain battered crumbling historic buildings. Tourist Lidia Morral of Barcelona, Spain, said Gustav had marred her holiday plans.
'It's been following us all over Cuba, ruining our vacation,' said Ms Morral, who was queuing up at a travel agency, trying to make other plans. 'They have closed everything - hotels, restaurants, bars, museums. There's not much to do but wait.'
Gustav roared into the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico yesterday. About 35,000 people working at offshore rigs and production facilities were evacuated ahead of the storm.
Forecasters said Gustav could hit the US Gulf coast today as a Category 5 hurricane, with winds above 249kmh. That is the highest rating on the Saffir-Simpson scale used to gauge the intensity of tropical cyclones.
More than a million Americans made wary by Katrina took buses, trains, planes and cars as they streamed out of New Orleans and other coastal cities, where the hurricane had killed about 1,600 people in 2005.
Mr Nagin issued a mandatory evacuation order and warned that anyone found off their own property could be arrested. An estimated 30,000 residents - the elderly, the disabled and the poor - were slated to be evacuated by bus and train.
ASSOCIATED PRESS

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We are situated 3 hours from New Orleans and are bracing for the thunderstorm Gustav will be bringing with him.