Hurricane Gustav weakened to a Category 2 storm Monday morning as it neared landfall on the evacuated Louisiana coast.
Hurricane-force winds were being felt along the coast of Louisiana on Monday, as Hurricane Gustav prepared to roar ashore.
The National Hurricane Center’s latest report has the center of Gustav 85 miles south of New Orleans, moving northwest at about 16 mph. Maximum sustained winds are near 115 mph, with no strengthening expected before landfall.
Making the rounds on the morning news shows, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said lessons from Hurricane Katrina three years ago have been learned and can be summed up as: “Planning, preparation and moving early.”
Chertoff said President George W. Bush is “very focused” on Gustav and the federal response to it.
Bush was on his way to Texas on Monday to monitor the federal response to Gustav. He hopes to get to Louisiana later, when he won’t disrupt emergency response efforts. Bush canceled plans to address the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.
FEMA’s second-in-command said Monday that Gustav is expected to be a catastrophic storm when it slams into the Gulf Coast late Monday morning, but there’s enough food, water, ice and other supplies stockpiled for 1 million victims over the next three days.
FEMA Deputy Director Harvey E. Johnson said the eye of the storm is expected to pass west of New Orleans, but its surge will likely overtop levees and at least partially flood the city that was hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Johnson said an estimated 2 million people have been evacuated from Louisiana, but as many as 10,000 remain in the New Orleans area.
He said evacuees who don’t have relatives to stay with are being housed in junior college dormitories away from the anticipated disaster area.
Officials in New Orleans are watching Gustav’s storm surge closely. While the levee system in the city has been shored up since Katrina, there’s concern about the city’s west bank, where repairs have not been completed yet. A surge of 4 to 6 feet is forecast.
(Source: WNBC.com)
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what a joke! The idiots in the media were having a field day telling up about the mother of all storms and katrina and bla bla and yada yada and everyone falls for it hook line and sinker. I guess they need a way to get people to tune in now that they cant report about the unaffordable gas prices any more.