By Sapa-DPA
A million people fled their homes in New Orleans on Sunday as Hurricane Gustav bore down on the city, hours after inflicting "considerable damage" in western Cuba.
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin bluntly told citizens: "You need to be scared. You need to be concerned, and you need to get your butts moving out of New Orleans right now.
"This is the storm of the century."
Gustav strengthened to a dangerous category four hurricane late on Saturday, on the 1-to-5 Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale.
The storm was expected to hit the US coast on Monday afternoon.
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Nagin also told citizens that if they chose to stay behind, they would be on their own.
Free buses and trains were being provided on Sunday morning to evacuate residents of the city, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said highways would have all lanes open leaving the city.
By Saturday night, the eye of the hurricane was located about 915km south-east of the north-central Gulf of Mexico coast.
| 'We have to do away with our party politics and we have to act as Americans' |
"Gustav is forecast to remain a major hurricane through landfall along the northern Gulf Coast," the National Hurricane Centre in Miami said.
More than 11,5-million Gulf Coast residents from Florida to southern Texas could be affected by Gustav, which would batter more than 175 000km² of coastline, the US Census Bureau said.
Thousands were streaming further inland from the states of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama, where President George Bush declared an emergency.
Authorities in Cuba were on Sunday trying to assess damage, and allowed evacuees to return to their homes.
Gustav had already claimed more than 80 lives in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica.
Meanwhile, John McCain tore up the script for his Republican National Convention, ordering the cancellation of all but essential opening-day activities as Hurricane Gustav churned towards New Orleans.
"This is a time when we have to do away with our party politics and we have to act as Americans," he said.
- This article was originally published on page 4 of The Star on September 01, 2008
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