Nearly 2 Million Flee as Gustav Closes In on Louisiana

BATON ROUGE, La. - They came by bus, by train and by car, a river of people flowing out of coastal Louisiana — and by Monday morning, officials said nearly 2 million had cleared out ahead of Hurricane Gustav, a storm the mayor of New Orleans called "the mother of all storms."

The evacuation, ordered in stages beginning Saturday, reversed the tragic script of Katrina. This time, thousands of city-assisted buses carried out residents with no cars of their own, and contraflow lanes turned every highway out of the coast into one-way escape routes.

At the Union Passenger Terminal in New Orleans, lines stretched for blocks Sunday as some 30,000 residents registered for rides to shelters in northern Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee and Kentucky. Many carried only plastic bags of clothes and framed photographs.

"I lost everything in Katrina. Everything," said Dorothy Mack, 62, boarding a bus with her two grandchildren. "I'm not staying to find out what this one takes."

Louisiana opened more than 100 shelters with room for 70,000 people, and neighboring states took thousands more. At the Red Cross shelter in Shreveport, rows of green cots filled a convention hall where evacuees watched the storm's approach on televisions.

Gov. Bobby Jindal said 7,000 National Guard troops were on duty across the state — twice the number available when Katrina struck — backed by buses, helicopters and boat teams pre-positioned outside the storm's path.

Hospitals and nursing homes in the evacuation zone moved their patients north by ambulance and chartered jet. The last patients left the public hospital in New Orleans early Sunday.

Not everyone went willingly. Police said a small core of holdouts refused to leave, and the city made clear that anyone who stayed was on their own. "There will be no rescue during the height of the storm," said Jerry Sneed, the city's emergency preparedness director.

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Associated Press writers contributed to this report.

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