Hurricane Gustav churns toward Louisiana, Gulf Coast

Sep 1, 2008, 5:54 GMT

Washington - Hurricane Gustav churned toward an evacuated US Gulf Coast early Monday, headed for landfall along the Louisiana coast during daylight hours.

The National Hurricane Center said the storm was about 360 kilometres south-east of New Orleans, and warned of isolated tornadoes. Updates were expected at 0600 and 0900 GMT.

The category 3 storm on the 1-to-5 Saffir-Simpson scale was packing winds of 185 kph. Weather officials said a 'little strengthening' was possible before landfall.

Gustav, which slashed a path of destruction and killed more than 80 people across the Caribbean in recent days, had already started lashing its newest target area with rain squalls Sunday evening.

With memories of the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster that killed 1,800 still fresh, federal, state and local officials moved quickly to evacuate more than 1 million residents along the coast from Alabama to Texas.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal estimated that 95 per cent of those threatened in Louisiana had headed northwards to shelters, hotels and friends as far away as Tennessee and Oklahoma.

Traffic was bumper to bumper on Sunday as all highway lanes were turned north, making it impossible to drive south into the storm's target area.

Even before Gustav hit, there were three deaths of critical care patients who were being evacuated from more than two dozen hospitals in Louisiana. Jindal said one of those who died had a 'do not resuscitate' order that ailing or elderly patients often put into their medical charts.

In St Paul, Minnesota, in the far-away northern tier of the country, the storm took a political, if not physical, toll.

Republicans meeting to nominate their presidential candidate, Senator John McCain, cancelled the political speeches planned for the convention opening on Monday. McCain felt they would be inappropriate as the nation watched the approaching natural disaster.

US President George W Bush, who got black marks for his administration's slow response to Katrina in 2005, had already cancelled his appearance in St Paul, saying he needed to go to Texas Monday where rescue and recovery operations were headquartered.