MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

New Orleans: Ghost town awaits Hurricane Gustav

After 3 years a new Katrina?

Hurricane Gustav began to lash the southern Louisiana coastline early Monday as it moved closer to an expected midday landfall, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.

While forecasters said it could intensify a bit before moving inland, it will not likely be the Category 4 storm earlier predicted -- a possibility that added urgency to mass evacuation orders in recent days. About 1.9 million of Louisiana's 2 million coastal residents had fled ahead of Hurricane Gustav by Sunday evening in the largest evacuation in state history, Louisiana's governor said. More than 200,000 people have left New Orleans, leaving an estimated 10,000 people in the city Sunday night, Gov. Bobby Jindal said, citing New Orleans' police chief. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had demanded an evacuation of the city, which still is recovering from 2005's Hurricane Katrina. Forecasters warned Gustav -- a Category 3 storm Sunday night -- could hit Louisiana with devastating effect by early Monday afternoon. Jindal said New Orleans' levees should "barely hold or barely be overtopped" if the storm, as predicted Sunday evening, hit southwest of the city. But even a slight shift to the east could bring "very significant flooding in these areas," he said. A leading researcher said the hurricane probably would test New Orleans' western levees, which, unlike levees in other parts of the city, didn't receive the brunt of Katrina's force in 2005. The western levees are low in some sections, he said. "From the west bank of New Orleans all the way across to Morgan City ... we're going to see communities potentially go under water from levee overtopping and potential breaching," said Louisiana State University Professor Ivor van Heerden, who warned long before Katrina that a major hurricane would be catastrophic for New Orleans. At 2 a.m. ET, forecasters said Gustav was a Category 3 storm and was centered about 170 miles (275 km) south-southeast of New Orleans and it was moving northwest across the central Gulf of Mexico at 16 mph -- the same speed and track reported late Sunday. The storm had sustained winds of 115 mph (184 kph), the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Florida, said. Category 3 hurricanes have sustained winds from 111 mph to 130 mph (178 kph to 209 kph). Hurricane-force winds could hit Louisiana's southern coast by sunrise Monday, and the storm's center could hit southwest of New Orleans by early Monday afternoon, CNN meteorologists said.