By Tim Gaynor and Matthew Bigg
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Nearly 2 million people fled theLouisiana coast on Sunday as Hurricane Gustav moved withinhours of striking land, possibly with a weaker punch than2005's devastating Hurricane Katrina.
The oil industry from Texas to New Orleans was taking nochances either, shutting down nearly all offshore platforms andmany refineries as Gustav threatened the region that pumps aquarter of the U.S. oil supply.
More than 11.5 million residents in five U.S. states couldfeel the impact of the fast-moving storm, which was alreadylooming as an issue in the hotly contested presidentialelection because of the botched response to Katrina's chaosalmost exactly three years ago.
President George W. Bush, who was criticized for the slowrelief efforts after Katrina, will travel to Texas on Monday tooversee emergency response efforts.
By Sunday night, the streets of New Orleans were ghostlyquiet after some 95 percent of the city's population respondedto desperate calls by officials for a sweeping evacuation.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said an estimated 1.9 millionpeople had fled coastal areas. Only 10,000 people were believedto have stayed behind in New Orleans.
Police and national guard troops patrolled the empty cityin Humvees as a curfew went into effect in an attempt toprevent looting.
Long lines of cars and buses streamed out of New Orleansafter Mayor Ray Nagin ordered an evacuation of the city of239,000 and told residents, "This is still a big, ugly storm,still strong and I encourage everyone to leave."
The U.S. National Hurricane Centre said Gustav was on trackto hit the Gulf Coast near Houma, Louisiana -- west of NewOrleans -- on Monday morning.
By Sunday evening the outer bands of the storm were nearingNew Orleans and had kicked up strong winds and the first sheetsof a driving rain expected to build over the next 24 hours.
The storm's top winds were expected to be around 125 mph(200 kph), making it a Category 3 storm, the U.S. NationalHurricane Centre said.
Forecasters said Gustav could still strengthen but said thehurricane was no longer expected to be a Category 4 hurricaneon the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.
Nonetheless, a storm surge of up to 14 feet (4.3 metres)could threaten the same levees that failed three year agoduring Hurricane Katrina. Federal officials say the leveesprotecting New Orleans are stronger now but still have gaps.
Centred some 220 miles (354 km) offshore, Gustav wasrumbling toward the Gulf coast at a 16 mile-per-hour (26km-per-hour) pace as of 11 p.m. ET, the National HurricaneCentre said.
The storm evoked memories of Katrina which left some 80percent of New Orleans under water, killed some 1,500 people infive states and cost near $80 billion.
Nagin warned anyone who defied evacuation orders they wouldface extreme danger, saying travel trailers that had housedsome of those displaced by Katrina might "become projectiles"in the hurricane-force winds. He laid down a dusk-to-dawncurfew and told looters they would be sent straight to prison.
CLOGGED HIGHWAYS
By most accounts, evacuations from New Orleans and othercoastal cities were proceeding smoothly although traffic wasmoving slowly on clogged highways.
The U.S. Coast Guard reported the first storm-related deathin Florida, where a man fell overboard as his craft ran intoheavy waves.
Katrina was a Category 3 when its 28-foot (8.5 metre) stormsurge burst levees on August 29, 2005. New Orleans degeneratedinto chaos as stranded storm victims waited days for governmentrescue and law and order collapsed.
Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who were criticizedfor their handling of Katrina, said they would not attend thisweek's Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Republican presidential nominee John McCain curtailedactivities for Monday's opening day of the convention andheaded to the Gulf to survey preparations and ordered politicalspeeches cancelled on Monday for his nominating convention.
In New Orleans, resident Vanessa Jones, 50, said she hadplanned to stay but changed her mind after watching the newsall night.
"I can't take a chance because so many people died inKatrina," Jones said as she prepared to board a bus headed toan unknown destination.
Thousands of people, still carrying emotional scars fromKatrina, jammed highways out of New Orleans. The governmentlined up trains and hundreds of buses to evacuate 30,000 peoplewho could not leave on their own and Nagin said 15,000 had beenremoved from the city, including hundreds in wheelchairs.
Flights from New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities werecancelled on Monday as the storm bore down on the region.
Residents boarded up the windows of their shops and homesbefore leaving town, while others hunkered down as "hold-outs"with stockpiled food, water and shotguns to ward off looters.
"I saw quite a bit of looting last time with Katrina, even30 minutes after the winds had stopped," said constructioncontractor Norwood Thornton, who opted to stay behind toprotect his home in New Orleans' historic Garden District.
Gustav weakened to a still dangerous Category 3 storm afterit passed over Cuba. It killed at least 86 people in theDominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.
But the latest warnings from the National Hurricane Centrebrought some relief with signs that the storm was weakeningslightly and sucking up less power over the warm Gulf waterthat made Katrina an explosive Category 5 as it moved north.
Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which followed it three weekslater, wrecked more than 100 Gulf oil platforms, but Gustavcould deal a harsher blow.
In a special trading session to accommodate the Labour Dayholiday and the storm's impact, U.S. crude oil features onSunday rose nearly $3 to over $118 per barrel.
"It remains likely that Gustav will prove to become a worstcase scenario for the producing region and places the heart ofthe oil production region under a high risk of sustainingsignificant or major damage," said Planalytics analyst JimRoullier.
(Additional reporting by Tom Brown in Miami and BruceNichols, Chris Baltimore and Erwin Seba in Houston; Writing byMary Milliken; editing by Jim Loney and Sandra Maler)
