LONDON: Thousands of people are scrambling to evacuate New Orleans this weekend as the city braces for its worst hurricane since Katrina struck with devastating force three years ago.

The ferocious winds of Hurricane Gustav will test official promises to learn from the fiasco of 2005, when images of people left helpless as their city drowned were seen as a shaming episode in George Bush’s presidency.

At dawn on Aug 30 long queues of traffic rolled out of New Orleans cars stacked with clothes, boxes and bags while inbound lanes sat empty. Hospitals began moving patients further inland as forecasters said Gustav was gaining strength and hurtling towards America’s Gulf coast.

Police with bullhorns were set to go from street to street to warn residents and tourists that there will be no government shelter in New Orleans itself. The doors to the Louisiana Superdome, where many sought refuge last time, will be locked as officials gamble that they can get people on to buses and trains in time.

Those among New Orleans’ estimated 340,000 residents who ignore orders to leave must accept “all responsibility for themselves and their loved ones”, the city’s emergency preparedness director, Jerry Sneed, has said.

Gustav was on Saturday upgraded to a category 3 storm, with winds near 115mph, and forecasters warned that it could rise to category 5, the same as Katrina. Bush has declared a state of emergency in Louisiana and Texas. Gustav has already struck the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands, killing more than 70 people. Cuban civil defence forces have been put on alert, and a mass evacuation is under way in low-lying coastal areas, where mudslides and floods are feared.

The hurricane was expected to move over western Cuba late on Saturday and into the southern Gulf of Mexico early on Sunday. It is projected to hit west of New Orleans early on Tuesday.

Officials say work has been ongoing every day over the past three years to improve protective levees that were breached by Katrina. The devastation exposed deep poverty, racial tensions and federal incompetence as thousands of people were left stranded without aid. Katrina left about 1,500 dead on the US Gulf coast, and $80bn in damages made it the costliest natural disaster in US history.

In 2005, as many as 30,000 people who could not or would not evacuate crammed into the Louisiana Superdome and the riverfront convention centre. They spent days waiting for rescue in squalid conditions and some died. Stung by the images that flashed across the world, including the photo of an elderly woman dead in her wheelchair, officials promised that it would never happen again.

This time, Louisiana has a $7m contract to provide 700 buses to evacuate the elderly, the sick and anyone without transport. Officials also plan to announce a curfew that will mean the arrest of anyone on the streets after a mandatory evacuation order goes out. Police and National Guardsmen will patrol after the storm’s arrival, and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal has requested additional urban search-and-rescue teams. The city also planned to enlist churches to help tell people where the buses will pick up evacuees.

But campaigners warned that official advice might not reach day labourers, homeless people and other marginalised groups. Saket Soni, director of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, said: “Hundreds if not thousands will fall through the cracks of an evacuation plan, and they will be left in the city, not out of choice but out of necessity.”

Elouise Williams, 68, said she called the city’s hotline on Thursday until she was “blue in the face”. She was concerned about getting a ride to the pick-up point and about what would happen to those who left. “If we have somebody in these houses and they’re not able to get out, they’re going to perish,” she said. “And we had enough of that in Katrina.”—Dawn/ The Guardian News Service