Keys residents weigh evacuation, Gulf Coast next?

NOAA satellite photo of Hurricane Ike, Sunday afternoon. Click on the image for the latest National Weather Service reports.

With powerful Hurricane Ike still hundreds of miles away and on an uncertain course, residents on these low-lying islands weighed evacuation orders Sunday, perhaps a hint that Gulf Coast residents as far away as Texas and New Orleans may not heed similar calls to leave.

Sunday's forecast had Ike crossing Cuba and headed into the Gulf of Mexico later this week. The Florida Keys were in an uncertain position, and Gulf Coast states even more so. In Texas and Louisiana, where people were just returning from the mass evacuation for a weaker-than-expected Gustav, officials already acknowledged that it may be difficult to get people mobilized again.

In Key West, many residents have their own formula for determining whether to leave. Even though evacuation orders became mandatory Sunday, traffic out of Key West was busy but not jammed.

Mike Tilson, 24, was in wait-and-see mode Sunday, stocking up his Key West houseboat with supplies.

"I got tarps and champagne," he said as he pushed a wheelbarrow of supplies including Heineken beer, ice and a loaf of bread down the dock.

He said if the storm tracks north of Cuba, he'd evacuate. Otherwise, he won't leave even if Key West is expecting a Category 3 (winds of 111-130 mph). "It's just a good party. I'll stay."

At 2 p.m. EDT Sunday, Ike was a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 135 mph, moving west at 13 mph. Hurricane force winds stretched 60 miles from the center. It was forecast to track over Cuba, re-emerging over the island's western coast Tuesday morning about 100 miles south of Key West as a Category 1.

Though forecasts suggested the storm was headed into the Gulf, historically, most major storms passing by Ike's position had curved northward. If it gets into the Gulf, it could head anywhere from Texas to the Florida Panhandle, and it likely would strengthen again.

President Bush declared a state of emergency for Florida because of Ike on Sunday and ordered federal money to supplement state and local response efforts.

More than 60 residents and nearly 90 people from a homeless shelter had arrived at a shelter at Florida International University in Miami by afternoon, but many others said they wanted to see what the storm does over Cuba and possibly reassess on Monday.

Key West Mayor Morgan McPherson had a warning for people not wanting to evacuate the area. He said anyone who thinks staying through a major hurricane is "champagne time is someone who hasn't thought it through clearly." He said emergency vehicles would be pulled off the road if the area gets tropical storm force winds.

McPherson said 15,000 tourists had already evacuated the region, and the Key West airport was set to close at 7 p.m. Sunday. Passengers bound for Key West from the Miami International Airport were being asked to show identification proving they lived there and only residents were being allowed on Key Westbound flights.

Among those planning to stay in the United States' southernmost city were Claudia Pennington, 61, director of the Key West Art and Historical Society, who said she's staying to care for the group's three buildings and their contents. Don Guess, 50, was putting up plywood on a friend's house Sunday and said he was sticking around because the storm didn't worry him.

(The Associated Press)

Click here for more GPB News storm coverage.

Louisiana residents in GA. weighing when to return

About five hundred of the evacuees from Hurricane Gustav are waiting out the hurricane in Georgia. Some three hundred of them are being hosted at Villa Rica, not far from the Alabama state line.

Red Cross and local volunteers here are providing cots, hot meals and showers for the displaced families.

The exhausted evacuees, many of with them children and elderly family members, are taking shelter in a gym and meeting rooms at a local recreation center.

One of them is Kenner, Louisiana, resident Nolan Eugene, who arrived in a convoy with friends:

"Everybody runnin' from that hurricane, but it done now passed over now, and I'm ready to get back home (laughs). We could leave out tonight, instead of spending another night here – I don't know… six carloads of us got to make a decision."

Villa Rica is one of five shelters the Red Cross has opened statewide including Columbus, La Grange, Lawrenceville and Tift County.

Click here for more GPB News coverage or Hurricane Gustav.

Evacuees waiting out Gustav in Ga.

About five hundred of the evacuees from Hurricane Gustav have taken refuge in Georgia. Some three hundred of them are being hosted at Villa Rica, west of Atlanta.

Many of the evacuees arrived at the center, not far from the Alabama state line, in convoys after an all-night drive.

Lisa Matheson of the Red Cross says they’re sheltering them in a gym at a local recreation center:

“This is where we have approximately 250 cots set up to take in the evacuees. We were very fortunate in this shelter, that we had several ancillary rooms where we could take the overflow to accommodate the nearly 300 people who are here.”

The evacuees are being given three meals a day, recreation facilities and medical assistance is they need it.

Villa Rica is one of six shelters the Red Cross has opened statewide, including Columbus, Dalton, La Grange, Lawrenceville and Tift County.

Click here for more GPB News coverage of Hurricane Gustav, and other severe weather.

The Gulf Coast waits: Will it be another Katrina?

(NOAA report)

With a historic evacuation complete, and gun-toting police and National Guardsmen standing watch over this city's empty streets, even presidential politics stood still Sunday while the nation waited to see if Hurricane Gustav would be another Katrina.

The storm was set to crash ashore midday Monday with frightful force, testing the three years of planning and rebuilding that followed Katrina's devastating blow to the Gulf Coast.

Painfully aware of the failings that led to that horrific suffering and more than 1,600 deaths, this time, officials moved beyond merely insisting tourists and residents leave south Louisiana. They threatened arrest, loaded thousands onto buses and warned that anyone who remained behind would not be rescued.

"Looters will go directly to jail. You will not get a pass this time," Mayor Ray Nagin said. "You will not have a temporary stay in the city. You will go directly to the Big House."

Col. Mike Edmondson, state police commander, said he believed that 90 percent of the population had fled the Louisiana coast. The exodus of 1.9 million people is the largest evacuation in state history, and thousands more had left from Mississippi, Alabama and flood-prone southeast Texas.

Louisiana and Mississippi changed traffic flow so all highway lanes led away from the coast, and cars were packed bumper-to-bumper. Stores and restaurants shut down, hotels closed and windows were boarded up. Some who planned to stay changed their mind at the last second, not willing to risk the worst.

"I was trying to get situated at home. I was trying to get things so it would be halfway safe," said 46-year-old painter Jerry Williams, who showed up at the city's Union Station to catch one of the last buses out of town. "You're torn. Do you leave it and worry about it, or do you stay and worry about living?"

Click here for GPB News coverage of Georgia's plans for assisting evacuees.

Forecasters said Gustav was likely to grow stronger as it marched toward the coast with top sustained winds of around 115 mph. At 5 p.m. EDT Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said Gustav was a Category 3 storm centered about 215 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and moving northwest near 18 mph.

Against all warnings, some gambled and decided to face its wrath. On an otherwise deserted commercial block of downtown Lafayette, about 135 miles west of the city, Tim Schooler removed the awnings from his photography studio. He thought about evacuating Sunday before decided he was better off riding out the storm at home with his wife, Nona.

"There's really no place to go. All the hotels are booked up to Little Rock and beyond," he said. "We're just hoping for the best."

There were frightening comparisons between Gustav and Katrina, which flooded 80 percent of New Orleans when storm surge overtook the levees. While Gustav isn't as large as Katrina, which was a massive Category 5 storm at roughly the same place in the Gulf, there was no doubt the storm posed a major threat to a partially rebuilt New Orleans and the flood-prone coasts of Louisiana and southeast Texas. The storm has already killed at least 94 people on its path through the Caribbean.

(The Associated Press)

Click here for more GPB News coverage of Hurricane Gustav, and other recent stormy weather.

Fort Benning, Columbus ready for Gustav's brunt

Fort Benning is mobilizing to support evacuation and medical efforts for storm-hit areas.

The Department of Defense has placed the infantry training base, along with five others in the southeas Federal Emergency Management Agency logistics staging areas for supplies and equipment.

Nearby, the Columbus branch of the American Red Cross says they have opened an emergency center for evacuees fleeing areas expecting to be hit by Hurricane Gustav sometime Monday.

The center is located at the Calvary Christian School on 7556 Old Moon Road.

Across the Chattahoochee River in Alabama, Russell County is also preparing, and has designated Chattahoochee Valley Community College in Phenix City as an emergency evacuation center.

Click here for more GPB News coverage on Hurricane Gustav.

Hurricane Gustav evacuees begin arriving in Ga. (updated)

NOAA infrared satellite image of Hurricane Gustav over the central Gulf of Mexico.

Georgia officials are readying plans to accept several thousand evacuees, if necessary from states that may be hit by Hurricane Gustav in the next several days.

Georgia Emergency Management Agency spokesman Buzz Weiss says two emergency shelters were opened Sunday afternoon:

"We opened, in collaboration with the Red Cross, two shelters: one in Villa Rica, the other in La Grange. As of last night, we had about 67 people in the Villa Rica facility, with a capacity of about 250; we had about 60 people in the La Grange shelter, with a capacity of about 500."

Weiss says say traffic on interstate highways I-20 and I-85 into Georgia from Alabama has risen significantly as of Sunday afternoon.

The Georgia Highway Patrol says over half of the license tags were from Louisiana and Mississippi.

Weiss says GEMA is closely monitoring the situation:

“…and as the need develops, we will look at the need to open additional shelters along the I-20 and I-85 corridor”

The hurricane is expected to make landfall Monday morning.

Metro Atlanta hotels and motels say they're renting rooms to self-evacuees from Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.

NASA visual satellite image of Hurricane Gustav over the central Gulf of Mexico.

Click here for updated NWS radar and satellite maps of the New Orleans area.

Click here for more GPB News coverage of recent hurricane activity in Gulf of Mexico.

Wildfires force more evacuations

Late Thursday afternoon, residents in an area southwest of Waycross were under mandatory evacuation orders when strong winds pushed flames across fire-lines.
The order was issued for those living on Swamp Road from Suwannee Chapel Road to Jim Cox Road, and another portion of Suwanee Chapel Road from Suwannee Chapel Church to Swamp Road.

The massive complex of fires together has burned over 380-thousand acres.