Flee Gustav or you're on your own, city says
NEW ORLEANS — With the latest forecasts predicting that Hurricane Gustav could strike New Orleans as soon as Labor Day, city leaders warned Friday that anyone who failed to evacuate would find no government-provided shelter.
Authorities said they planned to use more than 700 buses to evacuate up to 30,000 people today, including the sick and elderly, who have no other means of transportation. The "city-assisted" evacuation is to be followed by a mandatory evacuation order over the weekend, depending on the storm's progress.
"This is a very serious matter," Mayor C. Ray Nagin told reporters Friday -- three years to the day after Hurricane Katrina struck, killing about 1,600 people here and producing chaos amid poorly planned and badly executed emergency efforts.
"I'm encouraging all citizens to start to make plans to evacuate the city over the next couple of days," Nagin said.
Any of the city's 310,000 residents who stay behind must assume "all responsibility for themselves and their loved ones," said New Orleans' emergency preparedness director, Jerry Sneed.
Shelters are being set up in northern Louisiana and possibly in neighboring states, but not in New Orleans, officials said.
The warnings came several hours after a horse-drawn carriage brought the last seven unclaimed bodies of Katrina victims to a cemetery for burial as part of the city's ceremonies marking the third anniversary of the disaster. On Thursday, 78 unclaimed bodies were buried as officials braced for the coming storm.
Earlier Friday, some hurricane models showed that Gustav might track west of New Orleans. But late Friday, when updated forecasts predicted at least an indirect hit, officials launched the evacuation plans.
The National Hurricane Center said Gustav could grow into a Category 3 hurricane by the time it reached the mainland, with winds exceeding 111 miles per hour. As a Category 1, with sustained winds above 74 mph, the storm had killed 71 people in the Caribbean. By Friday night, it was 90 miles east of Grand Cayman, with sustained winds of 80 mph.
Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Hanna was projected to curl westward into the Bahamas by early next week. As of Friday, its sustained winds approached 50 mph.
Beginning at 8 a.m. today, buses at 17 pickup points will begin evacuating New Orleans residents to shelters. Trains will take some evacuees to Memphis, Tenn., officials said. The goal was to evacuate all 30,000 vulnerable residents in 24 hours.
