By RIA Novosti,
Washington : Almost two million people have fled the U.S. city of New Orleans in the face of Hurricane Gustav, earlier labeled ‘the storm of the century’ by the city’s mayor.
The hurricane, which on Sunday raged through Cuba, destroying 86,000 homes, has already reached the south coast of the U.S. and strong winds and rains have begun in an almost deserted New Orleans.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said that Gustav’s wind power was 185 km/h (115 mph).
The storm also affected the opening day of the Republican convention in St Pauls, Minnesota, where speeches were cancelled. U.S. President George W. Bush and Vice-president Dick Cheney also scrapped plans to visit the convention. Bush is expected to monitor relief efforts in nearby Texas.
There were also worries that Gustav could damage oil drilling and refining operations on the Louisiana coast.
Some 95% of the city’s residents are thought to have left town after mayor Ray Nagin called Gustav the “storm of the century” on Sunday and said, “You need to be scared”.
“I’m not sure we’ve seen anything like it,” he added, also saying that, “Anyone who’s thinking of staying, rethink it, get out of town.”
Some 10,000 people are thought to remain in the city – a handful of city workers and those who did not heed the warning to evacuate.
Nagin said on Sunday that Gustav would be even more powerful than Hurricane Katrina, the storm which hit the city in 2005, killing some 1,800 people and causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. Nagin was mayor of New Orleans when Katrina struck.
A dawn-to-dusk curfew is in place in New Orleans, and Nagin has said the city will crack down hard on looters.
There were no reports of deaths in Cuba, but the storm has so far taken some 90 lives in the Caribbean, including in Haiti, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic.