One Million Coastal Evacuees Seek Shelter

August 31, 2008— -- With Hurricane Gustav expected to make landfall Monday with devastating results, the nation's attention has been riveted through the weekend on New Orleans. But residents in dozens of other towns and cities along the Gulf Coast are also preparing for the storm – some heeding the warnings of officials and leaving, others hunkering down to weather the worst.

Up to 1 million residents of the coastal areas of Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi and Alabama have already been evacuated from the impact zone, and cities around the region were preparing to absorb the huge number of evacuees.

Hurricane warnings were issued for more than 500 miles of coastline along the Gulf of Mexico, from Texas to the Alabama-Florida border, as the monstrous, 600-mile wide storm churned its way toward the United States.

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana declared mandatory evacuations for 21 coastal parishes and opened the state's highways to contraflow traffic, allowing evacuees to use southbound lanes to drive northwards to safety.

Evacuations are under way in one of those parishes, Plaquemines, where the city of Belle Chase is under threat of flooding for the first time ever.

"I think we're in a more perilous position that we've ever been, at any time in our history," said parish Sheriff Jeff Hingless, who doubts the city's levees will withstand the deluge.

According to The Associated Press, many of the 1 million estimated evacuees were leaving New Orleans. Over the weekend, residents without their own cars were put on trains to Memphis and buses bound for shelters in northern Louisiana cities like Shreveport and Monroe.

According to New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, some 14,000 to 15,000 residents had already been evacuated by early Sunday evening, many having driven out of the city and taken up residence in state- and parish-sponsored shelters.

Ten thousand people from around the state already fully occupy four in-state shelters -- one each in Bastrop and Monroe and two in Shreveport -- set up for people without their own cars, according to the Louisiana Department of Social Services, which runs the shelters.