Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney scrapped their plans to address the convention, and McCain said that most opening-day activities would be canceled and added that he was unsure how the rest of the week would unfold.
"This is a time when we have to do away with our party politics and we have to act as Americans," McCain said. Republican officials raised the possibility of turning their convention into fundraising appeals for dispossessed Gulf Coast residents, and McCain's rival, Barack Obama, hinted at similar plans.
"I think we can activate an e-mail list of a couple of million people who want to give back," Obama said.
Bush emerged from a morning meeting with senior Federal Emergency Management Agency officials insisting that the federal government was prepared for Gustav this time -- in contrast to its much-criticized performance in the aftermath of Katrina and Hurricane Rita in 2005.
"There's a lot of preparations that have gone in anticipation of this storm," Bush said. As he urged Gulf Coast residents to understand the "serious risk" posed by Gustav, Bush also said that he had been informed by the Army Corps of Engineers that Louisiana's levees "are stronger than they've ever been."
But Nagin said bluntly today that he was concerned about whether the city's internal levees could ward off Gustav's powerful storm surge from the Lower 9th Ward and other low-lying areas. Nagin also warned that gaps in the Harvey Canal could endanger the city's West Bank.
"The storm surge could go over those levees or topple them," Nagin said.
The Army Corps was singled out for criticism after Katrina for failing to properly design and maintain the city's levee system. A massive federal upgrading of New Orleans' levee walls is underway but is not scheduled to be completed until 2011. Nagin held out hope that the repairs already made by the Corps would hold up under Gustav's storm surge.
The city's huge pumps can pump out an inch of water per hour for the first two hours of a major storm, and half an inch an hour after that, the mayor said.
"I think we'll be OK," he said.
Nagin said that a dusk-to-dawn curfew would go into effect Sunday night and warned anyone who considered remaining not to expect any city services once Gustav barrels inland. Most neighborhoods, he said, were cooperating.
Scores of buses provided by city officials had evacuated nearly 15,000 residents before noon, Nagin said.
