Pat Dollard | Young Americans

***UPDATE - Monday 11:30 pm ET

Gustav Drenches Gulf Coast, Mostly Spares New Orleans

(PICTURES)

NEW ORLEANS — A weaker-than-expected Hurricane Gustav swirled into the fishing villages and oil-and-gas towns of Louisiana’s Cajun country Monday, delivering only a glancing blow to New Orleans that did little more than send water sloshing harmlessly over its rebuilt floodwalls.

It was the first test of New Orleans’ new and improved levees, which are still being rebuilt three years after Hurricane Katrina. And it was a powerful demonstration of how federal, state and local officials learned some of the painful lessons of the catastrophic 2005 storm that killed 1,600 people.

“They made a much bigger deal out of it, bigger than it needed to be,” 31-year-old security worker Gabriel Knight said in New Orleans’ nearly empty French Quarter. “I was here with Katrina. That was a nightmare. This was nothing.”

That did not mean the state came through the storm unscathed. A levee in the southeastern part of Louisiana was in danger of collapse, and officials scrambled to fortify it. Roofs were torn from homes, trees toppled and roads flooded. A ferry sunk. More than 1 million homes were without power. And the extent of any damage to the oil and gas industry was unclear.

But the biggest fear — that the levees surrounding the saucer-shaped city of New Orleans would break — hadn’t been realized.

Wind-driven water sloshed over the top of the Industrial Canal’s floodwall — the same structure that broke with disastrous consequences during Katrina — and several Ninth Ward streets close by were flooded with ankle- to knee-deep water. Still, city officials and the Army Corps of Engineers expressed confidence the levees would hold.

Maj. Tim Kurgan, a Corps spokesman, said late in the day: “We don’t anticipate any problems, but we’re still watching this storm because it has not passed the area yet.”

Gustav blew ashore around 9:30 a.m. near Cocodrie (pronounced ko-ko-DREE), a low-lying community 72 miles southwest of New Orleans.

Forecasters had feared a catastrophic Category 4 storm on the 1-to-5 scale, but Gustav weakened as it drew close to land, coming ashore as a Category 2 with 110 mph winds. It quickly dropped to a Category 1 as it steamed inland toward Texas.

Authorities reported seven deaths related to the storm, all traffic deaths, including four people killed in Georgia when their car struck a tree. Before arriving in the U.S., Gustav was blamed for at least 94 deaths in the Caribbean.

In the days before the storm struck, nearly 2 million people fled coastal Louisiana under a mandatory evacuation order — a stark contrast from Katrina. Those evacuated included tens of thousands of poor, elderly and sick people who were put on buses and trains and taken to shelters and hotel rooms in several surrounding states.

It could be days until the full extent of the damage is known, especially in the fishing villages and oil-and-gas towns of bayou country, where rapid erosion in recent decades has destroyed swamps and robbed the area of a natural buffer against storms.

Keith Cologne of Chauvin, not far from Cocodrie, looked dejected after talking by telephone to a friend who didn’t evacuate. “They said it’s bad, real bad. There are roofs lying all over. It’s all gone,” said Cologne, staying at a hotel in Orange Beach, Ala.

In St. Mary Parish, to the west, Deputy Sheriff Troy Brown cleared roads with a chain saw as he went out to assess damage. He found uprooted trees, houses without some shingles, but few signs of monster hit. “Even the mobile homes are sitting there in one piece,” Brown said.

Jude Duplantis, 52, who lives near Bayou Terrebonne, was outside with a push broom trying to clear leaves out of a gutter to keep runoff from backing up. Duplantis had spent part of the day driving around, surveying damage and dodging debris.

“Everything’s like playing Nintendo when you’re driving ’cause there’s all this stuff in the road,” he said, holding up his hands as if turning a steering wheel back and forth.

One community in southeastern Louisiana feared its levee wouldn’t hold. The parish president called a local TV station to plea with any residents still there to flee, and crews moved sandbags and moving equipment into place to reinforce the levee and its metal floodgate. Though it was stressed, it didn’t break.

It could be a day or more before oil and natural gas companies can assess the damage to their drilling and refining installations. To the east of the city, state officials were unable to reach anyone at Port Fourchon, a vital energy industry hub where huge amounts of oil and gas are piped inland to refineries.

The Gulf of Mexico accounts for about 25 percent of domestic oil production and 15 percent of natural gas output. Damage to those installations could cause gasoline prices at the pump to spike, although oil prices declined Monday.

While Katrina smashed the Gulf Coast with an epic storm surge that topped 27 feet, the surge this time in New Orleans reached 12 feet, near the top of the Industrial Canal, on the eastern side of the city.

Officials expressed confidence all day long that the flood defenses in the eastern part of the city would hold. They were more concerned about the West Bank of the Mississippi River, where the $15 billion in levee improvements begun after Katrina have yet to be completed. But those floodwalls appeared to be holding, too.

Gustav was quickly marching inland, reducing the prospect of heavy rain in southern Louisiana. “From what I’ve seen, New Orleans metro should be back in business” on Tuesday, said Bill Read, director of the National Hurricane Center.

But Read said the storm will slow down as it heads into Texas and possibly into Arkansas, and could bring 20 inches of rain to those areas.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency stood ready to distribute enough cartons of food, water, blankets and other supplies to sustain 1 million people for three days — another contrast to Katrina, when thousands waited for rescue in the sweltering Superdome.

“With Katrina they didn’t come and rescue us until the next day,” said LaTriste Washington, 32, who stayed in her home during the 2005 hurricane and was rescued by boat. She was in a shelter in Birmingham, Ala., on Monday. “This time they were ready and had buses lined up for us to leave New Orleans.”

President Bush skipped the opening day of a scaled-back Republican National Convention to monitor the storm’s progress, and both Republicans and Democrats asked supporters to text-message donations to the Red Cross to help victims of the hurricane.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin hinted the city could be reopened as early as Tuesday, once the city assesses damage and is sure its neighborhoods are safe. Drinking water continued to flow in the city and the pumps that keep it dry never shut down, two critical service failings that contributed to Katrina’s toll. But two-thirds of the city’s electric customers were without power, as the storm damaged transmission lines that snapped like rubber bands in the wind and knocked 35 substations out of service.

The decision to reopen the city was eagerly awaited by those who fled the coast and watched the storm unfold on TV from shelters across the region.

Fights broke out at an overcrowded shelter in Shreveport. People who had slept, eaten and lived on cots for days struggled to get news about home from the lone television in the entire center. Doctors worried about medications running out and seven people were hospitalized, all in stable condition.

“People are desperate. They don’t know if they are going to have a place to go home to,” said Emma McClure, 37, who was at the shelter with her three children, three sisters and some 20 nephews. “They had three years to plan this and now I wish I had stayed in the city like I did during Katrina.”

In Mississippi, at least three people had to be rescued from the floodwaters. An abandoned building in Gulfport collapsed, a few homes in Biloxi were flooded, and the ground floor of the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino on Biloxi’s casino row was swamped with 2 1/2 feet of water. Katrina smashed the casino three years ago shortly before it was to open.

As Gustav passed, authorities turned their attention to Hurricane Hanna, which could come ashore in Georgia and South Carolina late in the week.

In New Orleans, many trees, light poles, traffic lights and signs had been blown down, and debris was strewn across the streets. But there was no flooding or major damage, and the storm brought only 3 inches of rain or less to the city. Police reported making just a single arrest.

Gerald Boulmay, 61, a hotel employee in New Orleans, emerged into a dry French Quarter not long after the rain stopped in midafternoon. The skies were brightening and the wind was breezy. But mindful of how the full extent of Katrina’s damage did not become clear until the storm had passed, he was still worried about a levee breach.

“I don’t think we’re out of the woods,” Boulmay said. “We still have to worry about the water.”
(AP)

MEANWHILE:

Hurricane Hanna Aims for Strike Along Southeast Coast

PROVIDENCIALES, Turks and Caicos — Hurricane Hanna stalled for hours over the southeastern Bahamas on Monday, lashing the islands with fierce winds and rain. Forecasters said it could hit the southeast United States by midweek.

Meanwhile Tropical Storm Ike emerged as a new threat in the open sea, as the National Hurricane Center in Miami monitored three weaker weather systems moving westward across the Atlantic.

Hanna, with maximum sustained winds near 80 mph, lingered for much of the day near Mayaguana and nearby islands in the southeast Bahamas.

(CONTINUE READING)

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LIVE VIDEO STREAM LINK

I sure pray these folks learned their lesson three years ago. God bless and speed the people ALL along the Gulf Coast in the cross hairs of this monster.

Especially members of Dollard Nation and their families … And MOST especially our military folks and their families and friends …

Cuba, US on Alert as Gustav Swells to Category 4

Now MOVE!

Previous info.

The GOP/RNC Convention the beginning of next week is also in the ‘path’ of this hurricane as it looks as if the convention could be effected. Read LBA’s post here.

NEW ORLEANS, Aug 30 - City officials will order a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans starting early on Sunday if Hurricane Gustav holds to its current course, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said on Saturday.

“If it continues on its current path we will start the mandatory evacuation process first thing in the morning at 8 a.m. (1300 GMT),” Nagin told reporters at City Hall. “We will make the call for the definitive mandatory evacuation.”

(Reuters)

From the NHC Forecast Diuscussion

THE FORECAST NOW CALLS FOR A PEAK AT [160 MPH]…CATEGORY FIVE INTENSITY…OVER THE SOUTHERN GULF WHERE OCEAN HEAT CONTENT WILL STILL BE HIGH. COASTAL STORM SURGE FLOODING OF 18 TO 23 FEET ABOVE NORMAL TIDE LEVELS…ALONG WITH LARGE AND DANGEROUS BATTERING WAVES … INTERESTS IN THE GULF OF MEXICO AND THE NORTHERN GULF COAST SHOULD CLOSELY MONITOR THE PROGRESS OF GUSTAV. A HURRICANE WATCH COULD BE ISSUED FOR PORTIONS OF THE NORTHERN GULF COAST LATER TODAY.

Hurricane Gustav is NOT alone … Here comes his sister from the flank.

Pump prices might begin to rise:

U.S. Oil, Gas Producers, Pipelines Brace for Gustav

By Margot Habiby

Aug. 30 (Bloomberg) — Royal Dutch Shell Plc and BP Plc plan to finish shutting oil and gas production platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and Enbridge Energy Partners LP will close pipelines as Hurricane Gustav gains strength and moves toward the region.

Shell and BP aimed to complete the shutdown of the equivalent of 800,000 barrels a day of oil production today. Enbridge said it will halt Gulf gas shipments effective 9 a.m. local time. Oil producers have shut at least 6.6 percent of output in the Gulf of Mexico, according to U.S. government figures at midday yesterday. Shell plans to halt 510,000 barrels a day and BP said it will stop about 290,000 barrels.

Fields in the Gulf produce 1.3 million barrels a day of oil, about a quarter of U.S. production, and 7.4 billion cubic feet a day of natural gas, 14 percent of the total, government data show. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 closed 95 percent of regional offshore output and, along with Hurricane Rita, idled about 19 percent of U.S. refining capacity.

UPDATE: (9:30 pm ET)

Weather and Evac Info for the New Orleans area and La.

Expert: Expect 12 hours of tropical-force winds in South Mississippi

(Sun Herald Biloxi, Miss.)

GULFPORT — At Hurricane Gustav’s present track, Harrison County and surrounding areas can expect 12 hours of tropical-force winds Monday between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., said Rupert Lacy, director of the Harrison County Emergency Management Agency.

Lacy said he doesn’t want to alarm the public, but wants to encourage all residents to finalize plans for where they plan to ride out the storm. The present course doesn’t indicate a direct hit here, but now is the time to make plans.

Disaster-relief plans are in place if needed.

Evacuees from FEMA trailers and MEMA cottages will be bused out of designated Harrison County locations to shelters in Jackson on Sunday from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. Buses taking residents to local shelters will run from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Mississippi Hurricane Gustav roundup

UPDATE: (10:00 pm ET)

***Bush: Gulf Coast govs to have full federal support

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush, faced with the prospect of a second monster hurricane striking the still-battered Gulf Coast on his watch, checked in with governors and federal officials Saturday to make sure Washington was doing all it can. He prepared for the possibility of travel to the region and designated two more states eligible for federal help ahead of Hurricane Gustav’s landfall.

The president called state leaders in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas in the early morning from the White House before heading out for a 90-minute bike ride, spokesman Scott Stanzel said. Those states are in the potential path of the hurricane, which has been cutting a deadly route through the Caribbean and picked up even more power Saturday, probably en route to a terrifying Category 5 designation.

Gustav crossed Cuba’s western tip before moving into the Gulf of Mexico and could reach the U.S. by as early as Monday afternoon. Just three years after Hurricane Katrina drowned New Orleans, a calamity from which the city still is not nearly recovered, it appeared very likely to get slammed again, by at least tropical-storm-force winds if not worse.

Bush also received regular updates from officials and aides about the storm’s path and the government’s preparations.

The president asked each governor if the federal government was providing the help they need and pledged “the full support” of his administration, Stanzel said.

Bush praised governors for mobilizing their states effectively to get ready.

“That doesn’t mean that everything will be totally smooth,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said. “We’re facing what could be a very strong hurricane, possibly one of the largest and strongest to hit America since records began.”

The Bush White House was badly burned by its fumbling response after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005. Bush’s image as a strong leader has never entirely rebounded, even though he has labored to improve on the Katrina performance.

On Friday, Bush pre-emptively declared states of emergency for Louisiana and Texas; he added Mississippi and Alabama on Saturday. Such a move is rarely taken before a disaster hits. The declaration clears the way for federal aid to supplement state and local efforts and formalizes coordination. The administration did the same thing before Katrina struck.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Federal Emergency Management Agency chief David Paulison have visited the region to monitor developments, and Chertoff was returning on Sunday. Equipment and people were put in position and safe shelters readied, with cots, blankets and hygiene kits en route.

The military was flying 1,500 civilian critical care patients from Louisiana and Texas to safer locations over the weekend. Some 16,000 other civilians could be flown from New Orleans to Dallas-Fort Worth, according to U.S. Northern Command, based in Colorado.

Paulison said during a briefing Saturday that the entire mobilization is “much, much different than we saw three years ago.” The kind of resources being put in place now and the coordination with local officials, all before the storm, are things that didn’t happen until afterward last time, he said.

“We have gone from a reactive organization … to a proactive organization,” he said.

In language that revealed officials’ high level of worry about just how punishing this storm could be, Paulison urged everyone to evacuate. He said there is plenty of help in place for people who do not have transportation or money to get out on their own. “There’s no reason for anyone to stay in New Orleans to ride out this storm,” he said. “We can’t stop the damage from happening. What we can do is move people out of harm’s way.”

The White House also kept a close eye out to see whether Bush might need to change his plans to travel to St. Paul, Minn., on Monday to be the night’s star speaker at the Republican National Convention. Perino said White House staff are discussing a range of possibilities, including an address by satellite, in case Bush decides to cancel in favor of traveling to the region either before or after the storm. More was expected to be known Sunday.

One of the reasons Bush was so criticized after Katrina was that he stuck to a schedule that took him from his ranch in Texas on a two-day trip to Arizona and California. There, he promoted a Medicare proposal while making just scant references to Katrina even as it slammed the Gulf Coast. Bush even happily strummed a guitar backstage at one event. He did not return to Washington until two days after the storm and did not visit the region until five days after.

Other preparations under way:

_FEMA teams are stocking up on emergency goods, including more than 2.4 million liters of water, 4 million meals, 478 generators, and 267 truckloads of blankets and cots, to have ready for hurricane victims.

_The Transportation Department is assisting states with evacuation procedures, such as by tracking fuel availability on major highways and supporting air-traffic control with standby mobile equipment in Houston.

——————————————————————————————
*** McCains, Palin going to region threatened by storm

PITTSBURGH (AP) - Likely GOP presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are traveling to Mississippi to check on people getting prepared for Hurricane Gustav.

McCain aides say McCain and his wife Cindy will join Palin in traveling to Jackson, Miss., Sunday at the invitation of Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. They said the McCains and Palins want to check on preparations because they are concerned about the people threatened by the storm, which is heading through the Gulf of Mexico and threatening the same area ravaged by Hurricane Katrina three years ago. The storm could hit the coast as early as Monday afternoon.

They will receive a briefing at the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency - a permanent operations center monitoring hurricane response.

***And the democrats continue to be exposed for what/who they really are:

Former DNC Chairman Don Fowler Amused by New Orleans Hurricane

Previous idiots hoping for Gustav’s hit on New Orleans.

***UPDATE - Sunday 11:15 a.m. ET

Powerful Gustav rips across Cuba, 250,000 evacuate

HAVANA (AP) - Cubans returned from shelters to find flooded homes and washed-out roads Sunday, but no deaths were reported after a monstrous Hurricane Gustav roared across the island and into the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.
About 250,000 Cubans were evacuated before Gustav made landfall on Cuba’s Isla de la Juventud, then again on the Cuban mainland in the region that produces much of the tobacco used to make the nation’s famed cigars.

It was just short of top-scale Category 5 hurricane with screaming 140 mph (220 kph) winds as it moved across the island, toppling telephone poles and fruit trees, shattering windows and tearing off the tin roofs of homes.

A Cuban television reporter on the Isla de la Juventud said the storm had felt like “the blast wave from a bomb.”

Gustav earlier killed 81 people by triggering floods and landslides in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.

The hurricane weakened slightly after crossing Cuba, slowing to Category 3 status before sunrise Sunday. But it still packed top winds near 120 mph (195 kph) and forecasters predicted it would increase to a Category 4 before making landfall Monday along the U.S. Gulf coast.

More than 1 million Americans made wary by Hurricane Katrina took buses, trains, planes and cars as they streamed out of New Orleans and other coastal cities, where Katrina killed about 1,600 people in 2005.

Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans, which was devastated by Katrina, issued a mandatory evacuation order and warned that anyone found off their own property after it takes effect can be arrested. Police and National Guard troops were on the streets, preparing to patrol evacuated neighborhoods.

Nagin called Gustav the “mother of all storms” and told residents to “get out of town. This is not the one to play with.”

Cuba’s top meteorologist, Jose Rubiera, said the storm brought hurricane-force winds to much of the western part of Havana, where power was knocked out as winds blasted sheets of rain sideways though the streets and whipped angry waves against the famed seaside Malecon boulevard.

But Sunday morning no flooding could be seen in central Havana, and state radio said the damage was “minimal” in the capital of 2 million people, although southeastern Havana remained without power and natural gas.

Public transportation began running again Sunday morning, as did buses and trains from Havana to the provinces. State radio said schools would open Monday everywhere except Pinar del Rio.

In the fishing town of Batabano, 31 miles (50 kilometers) south of Havana, evacuees returned to their pastel-colored homes to find many surrounded by knee-deep water.

At 8 a.m. EDT Sunday, the U.S. hurricane center said Gustav was centered about 375 miles (605 kilometers) southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and moving northwest near 16 mph (26 kph).

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Hanna was projected to move north of the Turks and Caicos Islands by late Sunday, then curl through the Bahamas by early next week before possibly threatening Cuba.

As it spun over open waters, Hanna strengthened slightly and had sustained winds near 60 mph (95 kph) early Sunday. The hurricane center warned that it could kick up dangerous rip currents along parts of the southeastern U.S. coast.

***UPDATE - Monday 4:00 a.m. ET

Gustav

Time: 2 am ET
Wind: 115 mph
Strength: Category 3
Direction: Moving northwest near 16 mph

The Gulf Coast waits: Will it be another Katrina?

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - With a historic evacuation of nearly 2 million people from the Louisiana coast complete, gun-toting police and National Guardsmen stood watch as rain started to fall on this city’s empty streets Sunday night - and even presidential politics took a back seat as the nation waited to see if Hurricane Gustav would be another Katrina.

The storm was set to crash ashore late Monday morning with frightful force, testing the three years of planning and rebuilding that followed Katrina’s devastating blow to the Gulf Coast. The storm has already killed at least 94 people on its path through the Caribbean.

Painfully aware of the failings that led to that horrific suffering and more than 1,600 deaths, this time officials moved beyond merely insisting tourists and residents leave south Louisiana. They threatened arrest, loaded thousands onto buses and warned that anyone who remained behind would not be rescued.

“Looters will go directly to jail. You will not get a pass this time,” Mayor Ray Nagin said. “You will not have a temporary stay in the city. You will go directly to the Big House.”

Col. Mike Edmondson, state police commander, said he believed that 90 percent of the population had fled the Louisiana coast. The exodus of 1.9 million people is the largest evacuation in state history, and thousands more had left from Mississippi, Alabama and flood-prone southeast Texas.

Late Sunday, Gov. Bobby Jindal issued one last plea to the roughly 100,000 people still left on the coast: “If you’ve not evacuated, please do so. There are still a few hours left.”

Louisiana and Mississippi temporarily changed traffic flow so all highway lanes led away from the coast, and cars were packed bumper-to-bumper. Stores and restaurants shut down, hotels closed and windows were boarded up. Some who planned to stay changed their mind at the last second, not willing to risk the worst.

“I was trying to get situated at home. I was trying to get things so it would be halfway safe,” said 46-year-old painter Jerry Williams, who showed up at the city’s Union Station to catch one of the last buses out of town. “You’re torn. Do you leave it and worry about it, or do you stay and worry about living?”

There were frightening comparisons between Gustav and Katrina, which flooded 80 percent of New Orleans. Gustav was forecast to bring with it a storm surge of up to 14 feet, but there was no doubt the storm posed a major threat to a partially rebuilt New Orleans and the flood-prone coasts of Louisiana and southeast Texas.

Forecasters said Gustav was moving faster than expected as it marched toward the coast with top sustained winds of around 115 mph. At 8 p.m. EDT Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said Gustav was a Category 3 storm centered about 175 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and moving northwest near 17 mph.

Rain started falling in New Orleans before sunset, and tropical storm force winds reached the southeastern tip of the state. The first hurricane force winds were due to arrive after midnight and reach Category 3 force - from 111 to 130 mph - at the point where Gustav’s center makes landfall west of the city.

New Orleans will likely be on the “dirty” side of the storm - where rainfall is heaviest and tornadoes are possible. But if the city is east of where Gustav’s eye crosses, the storm surge would be lower than if the city took a direct hit, reducing the chances of flooding. If forecasts hold, the city would experience lower winds and a storm surge of only 4 to 6 feet, compared to a storm surge of 10 to 14 feet at the site of landfall, said Corey Walton, a hurricane support meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center.

By comparison, Katrina brought a storm surge of 25 feet.

Surge models suggest large areas of southeast Louisiana, including parts of the greater New Orleans area, could be flooded by several feet of water. But Gustav appears most likely to overwhelm the levees west of the city that have for decades been underfunded and neglected and are years from an update.

Against all warnings, some gambled and decided to face the storm’s wrath. On an otherwise deserted commercial block of downtown Lafayette, about 135 miles west of the city, Tim Schooler removed the awnings from his photography studio. He thought about evacuating Sunday before deciding he was better off riding out the storm at home with his wife, Nona.

“There’s really no place to go. All the hotels are booked up to Little Rock and beyond,” he said. “We’re just hoping for the best.”

Mindful of the potential for disaster, the Republican Party scaled back its normally jubilant convention - set to kickoff as Gustav crashed ashore. President Bush said he would skip the convention altogether, and Sen. John McCain visited Jackson, Miss., on Sunday as his campaign rewrote the script for the convention to emphasize a commitment to helping people.

The nation’s economic attention was focused on Gustav’s effect on refineries and offshore petroleum production rigs. The combination of prolonged production interruptions, such as occurred when Katrina and Rita damaged the Gulf infrastructure, could trigger rising prices.

Billions of dollars were at stake in other wide-ranging economic sectors, including sugar harvesting, the shipping business and tourism. The Mississippi Gaming Commission ordered a dozen casinos to close.

The final train out of New Orleans left with fewer than 100 people on board, while the one of the last buses to make the rounds of the city pulled into Union Station empty. Police made final rounds around 7 p.m Every officer in the department was on duty, and 1,200 on street were joined by 1,500 National Guardsmen.

The only sign of life on St. Bernard Avenue - a four-lane artery through the partially rebuilt Gentilly neighborhood that flooded during Katrina - was a brown and black rooster meandering along the street.

“When the 911 calls start coming in, we’ll know how many people are left in town,” said police superintendent Warren Riley.

Even as they pressed to complete the evacuation, officials insisted there would be no repeat of the inept response to Katrina’s wrath. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said search and rescue will be the top priority once Gustav passes - high-water vehicles, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, Coast Guard cutters and a Navy vessel that is essentially a floating emergency room are posted around the strike zone.

West of New Orleans in Houma, he wished passengers well as stragglers boarded buses for Shreveport and Dallas.

“It’s going to be hot on some of the buses. It’s going to be a long trip,” Chertoff said. “So it’s not going to be pleasant, but it’s a lot better than sitting in the Superdome and it’s a lot better than sitting in your house.”

Melissa Lee, who lives in Pearl River, a town near the boundary of Mississippi and Louisiana, was driving away to Florida Sunday. Before she left, she heard neighbors chopping down trees with chain saws, trying to ensure the tall pines that surrounded their homes wouldn’t come crashing down.

“I sent my son out with a camera and said, ‘Go take pictures of our backyard. Because it’s going to look different when we get back.’”

WEB CAMS DOWNTOWN NEW ORLEANS

WEB CAM PASCAGOULA, MISSISSIPPI

***UPDATE - MONDAY 11:15 a.m. ET

Gustav weakens to Category 2 as it nears La. coast

NEW ORLEANS (AP) - A weakened Hurricane Gustav closed in on flood-prone coastal Louisiana Monday, bringing punishing wind and sheets of rain. But the storm veered away from New Orleans, where only a few holdouts and those that refused to abandon Bourbon Street remained.

Gusts snapped large branches from the majestic oak trees that form a canopy over St. Charles Avenue. Tens of thousands were without power in New Orleans and other low-lying parishes, but officials in said backup generators were keeping city drainage pumps in service.

But as a nervous nation watched to see if Gustav would deliver another Katrina-style hit on the partially rebuilt city, officials steadfastly insisted three years of planning and infrastructure upgrades had prepared them for whatever was to come. [ READ ]

***UPDATE MONDAY 11:30 a.m. ET

Geraldo Rivera FOX reporting WATER SPILLING OVER THE TOP of the Industrial Canal Levee in the UPPER 9th Ward area. The LOWER 9th Ward was the area flooded in Hurricane Katrina 3 yrs. ago when the levees breeched and flooded the city.

TWO ships and a barge are broken free and adrift in that canal … One is brushing up against a sewage and water treatment facility. U.S. Coast Guard hurrying to try and snag the dangerous drifting crafts … One is a decommissioned Naval ship … DEVELOPING

***UPDATE - MONDAY 7:30 pm ET

Despite Downgrade, Gustav Exposes Flaws in Levees

NEW ORLEANS — Waves crashed high against flood walls Monday and New Orleans’ rebuilt levee system survived its first hurricane in three years, but Gustav exposed weaknesses the Army Corps of Engineers won’t plug any time soon.

Gustav was no Katrina. It was smaller, and the worst rain and wind missed New Orleans. Its storm surge — between 10 and 15 feet lower than Katrina’s — entered New Orleans through navigation channels in the east and washed over the Industrial Canal.

The Industrial Canal has been characterized as the Achilles’ heel in the system, and the corps is spending $700 million on a barrier at its mouth to stop surges. But the barrier won’t be in place until at least 2011. On Monday, water overtopped parts of the canal’s flood wall causing minor flooding in some parts of the Ninth Ward.

Another major weakness in the flood protection system is in the area known as the West Bank, where almost 200,000 live. Gustav was expected to seriously test those levees, as the water will continue to rise into the evening hours. Work on the West Bank is far from complete. The corps has repeatedly said it may be the city’s weakest flank.

By Monday evening, however, the threat to most of New Orleans had subsided and levee officials felt confident the city would be spared flooding.

“All the walls have performed as they were designed to,” said Maj. Tim Kurgan, a corps spokesman. “Scour protection has done what it was supposed to.”

Scour protection — basically concrete pads behind floodwalls — is among a number of improvements in $2 billion in work to better protect New Orleans since Katrina flooded the city, bringing criticism and pressue on the corps.

Critics were quick to congratulate the agency.

“They did much better this time,” said Ray Seed, a levee expert with the University of California-Berkeley who’s studied the Katrina disaster and the city’s levee system.

But Gustav didn’t even test some potential trouble spots. The corps did not have to close newly installed floodgates on three drainage canals in New Orleans because water levels in Lake Pontchartrain never got high enough. Two of the canals — the 17th Street and London Avenue — were breached during Katrina and caused widespread flooding.

The corps’ system of pumps and floodgates on the canals has been plagued with problems. Any sigh of relief is premature and could even be risky, Seed said.

“The great danger is that people will become complacent,” Seed said. “Gustav should be a lesson that tells us we have to keep moving.”

New Orleans remains extremely vulnerable, said Paul Kemp, an oceanographer with the National Audubon Society.

“The fact that we have had in three years three of these storms, that threatened everybody in coastal Louisiana, shutdown all the offshore activities, it seems that this is a vulnerability that needs to be addressed more seriously,” Kemp said.

In many ways, Katrina was a turning point for flood protection in southeastern Louisiana. Since Katrina, Congress has approved $14.8 billion in construction for New Orleans’ levees. The corps says it will finish that work by 2011, making the city safe from severe hurricanes.

But for Louisianans, there is no time to waste. For the past century, south Louisiana has lost staggering amounts of wetlands — about 2,000 square miles. The loss of wetlands, marsh land and barrier islands has made the fragile delta a permanent disaster zone as the Gulf of Mexico gets closer with each passing hurricane season.

“We should have been building this system 30 years ago,” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La.

***UPDATE - 8:30 pm ET

What’s left of Cuba after Gustav … probably not much different than before it hit … just rearranged. Castro sucks … Why do the storms always seem to miss the Castro Estate?

(h/t Babalu)