(Adds detail on deserted streets of New Orleans, updates National Hurricane Center forecast, flight cancellations) * Nearly 2 million evacuate as Gustav nears Gulf coast * New Orleans ghost town with fewer than 10,000 remaining * Bush bows out of Republican convention, to visit Texas By Tim Gaynor and Matthew Bigg NEW ORLEANS, Aug 31 (Reuters) - Nearly 2 million people fled the Louisiana coast on Sunday as Hurricane Gustav moved within hours of striking land, possibly with a weaker punch than 2005's devastating Hurricane Katrina. The oil industry from Texas to New Orleans was taking no chances either, shutting down nearly all offshore platforms and many refineries as Gustav threatened the region that pumps a quarter of the U.S. oil supply. More than 11.5 million residents in five U.S. states could feel the impact of the fast-moving storm, which was already looming as an issue in the hotly contested presidential election because of the botched response to Katrina's chaos almost exactly three years ago. President George W. Bush, who was criticized for the slow relief efforts after Katrina, will travel to Texas on Monday to oversee emergency response efforts. By Sunday night, the streets of New Orleans were ghostly quiet after some 95 percent of the city's population responded to desperate calls by officials for a sweeping evacuation. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said an estimated 1.9 million people had fled coastal areas. Only 10,000 people were believed to have stayed behind in New Orleans. Police and national guard troops patrolled the empty city in Humvees as a curfew went into effect in an attempt to prevent looting. Long lines of cars and buses streamed out of New Orleans after Mayor Ray Nagin ordered an evacuation of the city of 239,000 and told residents, "This is still a big, ugly storm, still strong and I encourage everyone to leave." The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Gustav was on track to hit the Gulf Coast near Houma, Louisiana -- west of New Orleans -- on Monday morning. By Sunday evening the outer bands of the storm were nearing New Orleans and had kicked up strong winds and the first sheets of 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. National Hurricane Center said. Forecasters said Gustav could still strengthen but said the hurricane was no longer expected to be a Category 4 hurricane on 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 ago during Hurricane Katrina. Federal officials say the levees protecting New Orleans are stronger now but still have gaps. Centered some 220 miles (354 km) offshore, Gustav was rumbling toward the Gulf coast at a 16 mile-per-hour (26 km-per-hour) pace as of 11 p.m. ET, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm evoked memories of Katrina which left some 80 percent of New Orleans under water, killed some 1,500 people in five states and cost near $80 billion. Nagin warned anyone who defied evacuation orders they would face extreme danger, saying travel trailers that had housed some of those displaced by Katrina might "become projectiles" in the hurricane-force winds. He laid down a dusk-to-dawn curfew and told looters they would be sent straight to prison. CLOGGED HIGHWAYS By most accounts, evacuations from New Orleans and other coastal cities were proceeding smoothly although traffic was moving slowly on clogged highways. The U.S. Coast Guard reported the first storm-related death in Florida, where a man fell overboard as his craft ran into heavy waves. Katrina was a Category 3 when its 28-foot (8.5 metre) storm surge burst levees on Aug. 29, 2005. New Orleans degenerated into chaos as stranded storm victims waited days for government rescue and law and order collapsed. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, who were criticized for their handling of Katrina, said they would not attend this week's Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. Republican presidential nominee John McCain curtailed activities for Monday's opening day of the convention and headed to the Gulf to survey preparations and ordered political speeches canceled on Monday for his nominating convention. In New Orleans, resident Vanessa Jones, 50, said she had planned to stay but changed her mind after watching the news all night. "I can't take a chance because so many people died in Katrina," Jones said as she prepared to board a bus headed to an unknown destination. Thousands of people, still carrying emotional scars from Katrina, jammed highways out of New Orleans. The government lined up trains and hundreds of buses to evacuate 30,000 people who could not leave on their own and Nagin said 15,000 had been removed from the city, including hundreds in wheelchairs. Flights from New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities were canceled on Monday as the storm bore down on the region. Residents boarded up the windows of their shops and homes before 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, even 30 minutes after the winds had stopped," said construction contractor Norwood Thornton, who opted to stay behind to protect his home in New Orleans' historic Garden District. Gustav weakened to a still dangerous Category 3 storm after it passed over Cuba. It killed at least 86 people in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica. But the latest warnings from the National Hurricane Center brought some relief with signs that the storm was weakening slightly and sucking up less power over the warm Gulf water that made Katrina an explosive Category 5 as it moved north. Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which followed it three weeks later, wrecked more than 100 Gulf oil platforms, but Gustav could deal a harsher blow. [ID:nN30472395] In a special trading session to accommodate the Labor Day holiday and the storm's impact, U.S. crude oil features on Sunday rose nearly $3 to over $118 per barrel. "It remains likely that Gustav will prove to become a worst case scenario for the producing region and places the heart of the oil production region under a high risk of sustaining significant or major damage," said Planalytics analyst Jim Roullier.(Additional reporting by Tom Brown in Miami and Bruce Nichols, Chris Baltimore and Erwin Seba in Houston; Writing by Mary Milliken; editing by Jim Loney and Sandra Maler)
A Louisiana police car patrols a deserted downtown, next to the 25-foot tall concrete levee that keeps the Atchafalaya River out of the city, in Morgan City August 31, 2008. Nearly ...
