As Gustav Nears, Gulf Coast Puts Faith in Planning

"We're almost sold out," said Sheila Harris, the administrative assistant at the Comfort Inn in Tupelo, Miss, which is about 300 miles inland from the Mississippi coast. She said most of the 83 rooms at the hotel had been booked by New Orleans and southern Mississippi residents.

Many residents found themselves repeating the same things they did in the days before Katrina. The New Orleans Saints were set to play the Miami Dolphins in the team's final NFL preseason game Thursday night; the Saints played their final game of the 2005 preseason just three days before Katrina. Running back Deuce McAllister, who was planning to shore up his suburban home, found it a little weird to be preparing for a possible storm again.

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"It's out of our hands," said McAllister. "We'll just have to wait and see what happens."

The city was expected to announce later Thursday whether officials would go ahead with events to mark the Katrina anniversary. Among the events that have been planned are a jazz funeral to bury remains of unidentified Katrina victims and a candlelight vigil at Jackson Square.

If a Category 3 or stronger hurricane threatens, New Orleans plans to institute a mandatory evacuation order. Depending on the churn of this system, the call could come with a slow-moving Category 2, the city's emergency preparedness director, Jerry Sneed, said.

Nagin said in interviews Wednesday that the clock on an evacuation would start three days, or 72 hours, from an anticipated landfall.

Unlike Katrina, there will be no massive shelter at the Superdome, a plan designed to encourage residents to leave.

Residents who need help - the elderly, disabled, those without their own transportation - would be moved out by buses, bound for shelters in other Louisiana cities such as Alexandria, Shreveport and Monroe, and Amtrak trains headed to Jackson, Miss., officials have said. Others are expected to leave on their own by vehicle.

The city said it is prepared to move 30,000 residents; estimates put the city's current population between 310,000 to 340,000 people. There were about 454,000 here before Katrina hit.