NEW ORLEANS — Bill Rau, the 45-year-old owner of a French Quarter antique shop that sells diamonds and 18th century clocks, flew his family to Dallas on Sunday, not because he knew anyone there but because it was the only way he could get out of town.
He thought about driving but feared that Hurricane Katrina -- a menacing storm with sustained winds of at least 160 mph expected to strike before 7 this morning -- would catch up with him while he sat in traffic.
So he spent $3,000 and bought the only tickets he could find: six one-way, first-class seats to Dallas.
John Higgins was struggling in a different way. The 49-year-old man hobbled through New Orleans as the wind picked up, carrying what he owned -- a purple comb, a radio and a pack of instant coffee -- on his back.
The homeless shelter where Higgins usually stayed had closed because of fears that Katrina would destroy it. He had no car, no money and nowhere to go, so he was trying to make his way to the Louisiana Superdome, the downtown arena that had hosted Super Bowls and Bob Hope but was pressed into service as a storm shelter.
To some degree, Katrina was an equalizer, leaving Rau and Higgins clawing their way to safety.
But it also served as a reminder that this is a city of haves and have-nots. And on Sunday, by and large, the former got out of town -- about 1 million of the metropolitan area's 1.6 million people, officials said -- and the latter were left behind.
"Ain't that life?" Higgins asked.
Those who remained in New Orleans, a large part of which sits below sea level, will probably wake this morning to calamity.
If Katrina maintains its strength, it will arrive as a Category 5 hurricane, the most powerful. Only three Category 5 hurricanes have struck the United States. The last was Hurricane Andrew, which pummeled Florida in 1992.
Katrina grew after hitting Florida's east coast Thursday as a Category 1 hurricane, causing 11 deaths before blowing across the state into the Gulf of Mexico, lifting fuel from the warm water.
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation for the first time in the city's history, calling the storm a "once-in-a-lifetime event."
"The city of New Orleans has never seen a hurricane of this magnitude hit it directly," Nagin said as he and Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco announced the evacuation at a news conference. "This is awesome."
