NEW ORLEANS — Calling the hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast "the mother of all storms," Mayor C. Ray Nagin on Saturday night declared a mandatory evacuation of this city's more than 230,000 residents and tourists.
"You need to be getting your butts moving out of New Orleans now," Nagin said of Hurricane Gustav, a storm the National Hurricane Center said could be a Category 5 -- the top intensity -- when it enters the Gulf of Mexico today.
Gustav, watched closely all week by Louisianians still recovering from Hurricane Katrina in 2005, gained frightening strength Saturday.
The storm, which has killed about 80 people in the Caribbean, hit the mainland of western Cuba in a tobacco farming region Saturday packing 140-mph winds, forcing more than 300,000 people to evacuate and causing widespread damage.
On Isla de la Juventud, an island of 87,000 residents south of the mainland, an official reported "many" injuries and said nearly all the island's roads were washed out.
The National Hurricane Center called it an "extremely dangerous" storm.
"That puts a different light on our evacuations, and hopefully that will send a very clear message to the people in the Gulf Coast to really pay attention," said R. David Paulison, head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. "There's no reason for anyone to stay in New Orleans to ride out this storm. We can't stop the damage from happening. What we can do is move people out of harm's way."
President Bush spoke with governors and federal officials along the coast in Gustav's path and sought to assure them that Washington would be ready to help. The federal response to Katrina three years ago was sharply criticized.
"He told each of the governors that federal officials were monitoring Hurricane Gustav very closely," spokesman Scott Stanzel said. "President Bush pledged the full support of the federal government."
Dana Perino, White House press secretary, cautioned that that did not mean "everything will be totally smooth."
"We're facing what could be a very strong hurricane, possibly one of the largest and strongest to hit America since records began," she said.
Asked whether Bush would forgo his plans for an opening-night speech Monday at the Republican National Convention in Minnesota, Perino said any decision probably would not be made until Monday.
