New Orleans Prepares For Gustav
City Hopes to Avert Katrina-Like Disaster

By Mike Perlstein and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, August 30, 2008; A01

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 29 -- With Hurricane Gustav bearing down on this still-recovering region, officials on Friday took the first steps in extensive evacuation plans, hoping the lessons learned three years ago during Hurricane Katrina will avert the chaos that followed.

Officials in Washington and in New Orleans expressed confidence that construction of massive floodgates would provide adequate protection against Gustav, which had top winds of 80 mph late Friday and is expected to hit the Gulf Coast by early Tuesday. Officials also predicted that plans for removing residents, maintaining public order and avoiding disruption of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico would go smoothly.

"There are phenomenal improvements at the federal level, at the state level and local level that we're going to benefit from, and [that] you'll be able to watch and see as a result," said Harvey E. Johnson Jr., deputy administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Still, implementation of the blueprints drawn up after Katrina, which roared ashore exactly three years ago, remains incomplete. Most notably, a flood-control system designed to protect vulnerable low-lying areas such as the Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish is still years from being finished.

"We all know that the system has not been completed to withstand the 100-year-storm level, which is set to be in place by 2011," said Tim Doody, president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority. "But the system is better than it was pre-Katrina. We are cautiously optimistic."

The city of New Orleans said late Friday that it had completed the relocation of more than 2,100 parish prison inmates and that medical evacuations of hospitals and nursing homes were underway.

Louisiana began moving vulnerable populations such as nursing home residents and hospital patients Friday, Johnson said. Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama would begin urging residents to move inland Saturday, followed by mandatory evacuation orders for low-lying areas Sunday, he said.

"All states will begin evacuations tomorrow," said Johnson, a retired Coast Guard vice admiral. "Some states are doing medical evacuations today."

President Bush declared a state of emergency for Louisiana and Texas, clearing the way for federal aid in addition to state and local efforts, officials said. Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas have also issued their own state emergency and disaster declarations and alerted National Guard units.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush has received continuous briefings on the storm, but reiterated that it was too early to say whether it would alter his plans to address the Republican National Convention on Monday in St. Paul, Minn.

Officials were not the only ones caught unprepared when Katrina hit in 2005, eventually causing more than 1,800 deaths and flooding 80 percent of New Orleans. Many residents did not heed the warnings about the danger of the approaching storm. This time, however, seems different.

While government agencies and schools put emergency plans into effect, hurricane-hardened residents began filling their cars with gasoline, lining up at banks to get cash, stocking up on food and water, and boarding up their homes.

Marcy Murray, a New Orleans real estate lawyer, spent Friday planning to leave over the weekend with her husband, two children, their Chihuahua, Bud, and 18-year-old cat, Ophelia. She did not draw up one plan, but three.

"I made hotel reservations in Memphis, which was the closest room I could find," Murray said. "Now if it looks like an extended evacuation, I'm also considering going to my parents' house in Atlanta. I'm also looking at a camp in Mississippi if the traffic is too heavy."

Even in the arena of sports, contingency plans were being used. Tulane University moved its football practices to Jackson, Miss. The New Orleans Saints would relocate their practices to Indianapolis. And in Baton Rouge, the Louisiana State University football team moved its season opener from 4 p.m. to 10 a.m. in case the region has to accommodate evacuation traffic.

While the evacuation machinery -- both public and private -- seems to be in much better shape than it was three years ago, flood protection remains a work in progress. The federal government has spent more than $2 billion to shore up the region's vulnerable levee system, but more than $10 billion in protection projects remains under construction or on the drawing board, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The most significant improvement since Katrina has been the construction of massive floodgates at the mouths of New Orleans' three main drainage canals. Unprotected during Katrina, the canals filled with water forced in by a storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain to the north, collapsing the floodwalls that line the canals.

The new floodgates will not only prevent the lake from flowing into the canals, but are designed to pump water into the lake from the canals as they are filled by rain and storm drains, said Maj. Tim Kurgan of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

"No floodwater will get into that system," he said. "And once those gates are closed, we can pump water out of there as fast as it comes in."

Work has not started on a floodgate to block water from surging into the huge Industrial Canal, a shipping corridor that cuts through the city's Ninth Ward. An even more ambitious project to close the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, a ship channel that moves through eastern New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish, is years away. All of those areas experienced severe flooding from Katrina and have been the slowest to rebound.

Bush administration officials said the nation's energy infrastructure is better prepared to withstand a major storm in Gulf areas than it was in 2005, and emphasized that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is at a record 90 percent of capacity, with 707 million barrels in storage.

The Gulf Coast accounts for about 25 percent of the nation's oil and 10 percent of its natural gas production. But Energy Department officials said the reserve could release 4.4 million barrels of oil per day, three times the daily production of the Gulf Coast.

"The department is better prepared than ever before to respond to a significant petroleum event," said Kevin M. Kolevar, an assistant energy secretary.

The American Red Cross and other disaster relief charities are mobilizing operations in the Gulf Coast region. Red Cross officials said they are sending about two-thirds of its national disaster fleet to Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and is setting up communications networks in the region.

About 3,100 Red Cross volunteers from across the nation will blanket the Gulf Coast this weekend, and the agency said it will be able to serve about 750,000 prepackaged meals and to shelter 500,000 people.

"We're preparing for what we believe could be a major event," said Joe Becker, Red Cross senior vice president of disaster services. "This will be large-scale, certainly the largest we've mounted since Katrina."

Hsu reported from Washington. Staff Writers Dan Eggen and Philip Rucker contributed to this report.