By Tim Gaynor and Matthew Bigg
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Hurricane Gustav hurtled towardcollision with the Louisiana coast on Monday, bringing poundingrain, surging wind and the most direct threat to New Orleanssince the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Nearly 2 million people fled the Louisiana coast and morethan 11 million residents in five U.S. states were braced forthe impact from the fast-moving storm, which was expected tomake landfall on Monday morning around New Orleans.
Oil companies shut down nearly all production in theenergy-rich Gulf of Mexico, a region that normally pumps aquarter of U.S. oil output and 15 percent of its natural gas.
Gustav also took centre stage in U.S. presidential politicsas Republicans prepared to open their convention on Monday tonominate presidential candidate John McCain with a bare-bonesprogram stripped of the usual pomp and circumstance.
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.
An estimated 1.9 million people had fled coastal areas.Only 10,000 people were believed to have stayed behind in NewOrleans. Police and national guard troops patrolled the emptycity as a curfew went into effect in a bid to prevent looting.
By early Monday the outer bands of the storm were nearingthe coast and had kicked up strong, gusting winds south of thecity that were expected to gather force through the morning.
The storm packed maximum sustained winds of 115 mph (185kph), making it a Category 3 storm, the U.S. National HurricaneCentre 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.
Even so, a storm surge of up to 14 feet (4.3 metres) couldthreaten the same levees that failed during Hurricane Katrina.Federal officials say the levees protecting New Orleans arestronger now but still have gaps.
Hurricane Katrina brought a 28-foot (8.5 metre) storm surgethat burst levees on August 29, 2005. New Orleans degeneratedinto chaos as stranded storm victims waited days for governmentrescue and law and order collapsed.
Gustav was expected to swamp parts of Louisiana,Mississippi, Arkansas and Texas with up to 12 inches of rainand could spin off isolated tornadoes, forecasters said.
Centred some 170 miles (275 km) offshore, southeast of NewOrleans, Gustav was rumbling toward the Louisiana coast at a 16mile-per-hour (26 km-per-hour) pace as of 1 a.m. EDT (6 a.m.British time).
The approach of the storm stirred uneasy comparisons toKatrina which flooded some 80 percent of New Orleans, killedsome 1,500 people in five states and cost near $80 billion(44.3 billion pounds).
President George W. Bush, who was criticized for the slowrelief efforts after Katrina, cancelled his appearance at theRepublican convention as scheduled instead a visit to Texas onMonday to oversee emergency response effort.
McCain headed to the Gulf to survey preparations andordered political speeches cancelled on Monday for hisnominating convention.
Fearing televised images of a choreographed Republicancelebration would be seen as out of touch, McCain's campaignsought to distance itself from the botched response toKatrina's chaos almost exactly three years ago.
In New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatoryevacuation and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew, warning lootersthey would be sent straight to jail.
'A BIG, UGLY STORM'
Long lines of cars and buses streamed out of New Orleans onSunday after Nagin ordered an evacuation of the city of 239,000and told residents, "This is still a big, ugly storm, stillstrong and I encourage everyone to leave."
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 diedin Katrina," she said as she prepared to board a bus headed toan unknown destination.
The government lined up trains and hundreds of buses toevacuate 30,000 people who could not leave on their own andNagin said 15,000 had been removed from the city, includinghundreds 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.
The U.S. Coast Guard reported the first storm-related deathin Florida on Sunday, where a man fell overboard as his craftran into heavy waves.
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 byKevin Krolicki; editing by Jim Loney and Sandra Maler)
