Louisiana declares emergency as Gustav nears

Residents prepare for the worst on cusp of Katrina's third anniversary

New York search and rescue team heads to Gulf Coast

Three years ago, FDNY Battalion Chief Joseph Downey was part of a search and rescue unit that worked in Biloxi, Miss., after Hurricane Katrina barreled into the Gulf Coast.

"Entire towns were wiped out," Downey recalled yesterday, as he and more than 30 New York City firefighters and police officers headed south again, this time in anticipation of Hurricane Gustav. Forecasters predicted Gustav would hit the Gulf Coast region tomorrow.

With news that Gustav was expected to swell into a Category 5 hurricane, Downey, 46, of West Islip, said members of his team, named Task Force 1, were preparing for the worst.

"If it hits as a Category 5, we're expecting a tremendous amount of damage," Downey said during a telephone interview as the team traveled near Roanoke, Va.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency activated the first responders on Friday, said Chris Gilbride, a spokesman for New York City's Office of Emergency Management.

"They're experts in search and rescue in confined spaces," Gilbride said.

When the team left yesterday, Gustav was intensifying toward a Category 5 hurricane - the highest - with maximum sustained winds above 155 mph and storm surges 18 feet above normal.

Downey said his team was "excited to go down and help" but also had to be patient. FEMA planned for Task Force 1 to be in Atlanta today and wait for further orders from there.

All the driving yesterday came after hours of work on Friday loading equipment, Downey said.

The storm could land anywhere from Mississippi to Texas.

New York's Task Force 1 is one of 28 search and rescue teams around the nation that can be activated by FEMA in an emergency. New York's team has two tractor-trailers filled with equipment and supplies to sustain the team for 72 hours, Gilbride said.

The team consists of 35 people and 10 vehicles, including the tractor-trailers.

FEMA established an Urban Search and Rescue System in 1989. New York's Task Force 1 became a member of FEMA's system in 1992. The unit is made up of New York City first responders prepared to deploy within six hours of notification.

Gustav hits towns outside New Orleans hardest

Levee breach feared in southernmost parish as storm moves toward Texas

NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans' levees were holding their own Monday, but other communities across southern Louisiana saw Hurricane Gustav slam into their backyards �?tossing trees onto homes and pushing floodwalls to their limits.

The nearly 2 million people who left coastal Louisiana on a mandatory evacuation order watched TV coverage from shelters and hotel rooms hundreds of miles away. While New Orleans wasn't submerged, there were scores of homes that suffered damage. More than 1 million customers were without power.

One community in southeast Louisiana feared its levee wouldn't hold. As many as 300 homes in Plaquemines Parish were threatened, and the parish president called a television station to issue an urgent plea to any residents who were left to flee to the Mississippi River, where officials would evacuate them.

It's overtopping. There's a possibility it's going to be compromised," said Phil Truxillo, an emergency official in Plaquemines, the state's southernmost parish located at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

In Terrebonne Parish, in the southeast part of the state, several homes had torn roofs, but winds were still too fierce for officials to fan out and assess how bad the damage was.

Keith Cologne of Chauvin, a town in Terrebonne, looked dejected after talking by telephone to a friend who didn't evacuate. "They said it's bad, real bad. There are roofs lying all over. It's all gone," said Cologne, staying at a hotel in Orange Beach, Ala.

The storm was expected to move into Texas overnight and drop as much as 20 inches of rain there by Thursday. Seven U.S. deaths were tied to Gustav: four evacuees were killed in Georgia when their car struck a tree; two people were crushed by a tree in Baton Rouge; and a woman leaving New Orleans died in a car accident.

While Louisiana residents dealt with Gustav, communities from Miami to the Outer Banks of North Carolina were surprised Monday by the news that Tropical Storm Hanna had become a hurricane and could make landfall somewhere along that stretch of coast in a few days.

And a new tropical storm, Ike, formed east of Hanna in the Atlantic on Monday. Forecasters said it could become a hurricane in a few days and was moving to the west-northwest but that it was too early to project landfall anywhere.

Optimism in the Big Easy
In New Orleans, city pumps at levees �?still only partially rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina �?were able to keep up with the surge, an Army Corps of Engineers official said Monday.

Maj. Gen. Don Riley, deputy commander of the engineers, told a briefing by the Federal Emergency Management Agency that the levees in the greatest danger were in the southern part of Lafourche Parish southwest of New Orleans and closer to where Gustav came ashore.

"The only ones that we think are in the greatest danger are in south Lafourche Parish," he said.

He said that although waves washing over the tops of the levees in New Orleans and high water pressing the walls raised the potential for problems, officials were "confident in the resilience" of the levees rebuilt after Katrina.

"There's no question they have a safer system now than they did during Katrina," one official said of the levee system.

Up to 50,000 National Guard troops have been authorized by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to help in the aftermath of the hurricane, Maj. Bill Etter of the National Guard said.

"We've seen a very well-prepared nation for Hurricane Gustav," a FEMA official said.

In the Upper Ninth Ward, about half the streets closest to the Industrial Canal were flooded with ankle- to knee-deep water as the road dipped and rose. Floodwater overtopped the canal but did not breach it.

Landfall near Cocodrie
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Gustav made landfall Monday near Cocodrie, a low-lying community in Louisiana’s Cajun country about 72 miles southwest of New Orleans. By 3 p.m. ET, Gustav's winds had dropped to 90 mph, reducing it from a Category 2 to a Category 1 hurricane.

The extent of the damage in Cajun country was not immediately clear. State officials said they had still not reached anyone at Port Fourchon, a vital hub for the energy industry where huge amounts of oil and gas are piped inland to refineries. The eye of Gustav passed about 20 miles from the port and there were fears the damage there could be extensive.

Forecasters once feared a storm that would arrive as a devastating Category 4 with much more powerful winds.

While New Orleans avoided a direct hit, the storm could be devastating where it did strike. For most of the past half century, the bayou communities that thrived in the Barataria basin have watched their land literally disappear. A combination of factors �?oil drilling, hurricanes, river levees, damming of rivers �?have destroyed marshes and swamps that once flourished in this river delta.

Entire towns in the basin of the Mississippi delta have disappeared because of land loss. The rates of loss are among the highest in the world; erosion has left it with virtually no natural buffer.

Hanna eyes Bahamas after battering Haiti

Emergency declared in Fla. as experts warn storm could hit New York

SAINT-MARC, Haiti - Far-reaching Tropical Storm Hanna drenched flood-plagued Haiti on Wednesday, adding to the miseries of a country that has lost 110 lives to mudslides and flooding since mid-August.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Ike was cruising westward across the Atlantic and had strengthened to hurricane status as it moved toward the Bahamas.

Hanna had been drifting south and east before it swung toward the north-northwest on Wednesday. It was expected to sweep across the Bahamas and then start climbing along the U.S. coastline by the weekend, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. Experts said there is a 20 percent chance Hanna could bring tropical storm force winds to New York City.

Haitian authorities on Wednesday reported five more deaths caused by Hanna, raising the toll to 26.

A day after sending Haitian families scrambling onto rooftops to avoid flooding, Tropical Storm Hanna was meandering off the country's northern coast Wednesday, dumping heavy rain on much of Hispaniola.

But Hanna was expected to begin moving over the Bahamas later in the day.

A day earlier, Hanna added to the misery in Haiti, a country still recovering from drenchings by Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Fay in the past two weeks.

In all, floods and mudslides from the three storms have killed more than 100 people as Haiti's deforested hills melted away in torrential rains.

‘They are screaming for help�?/STRONG>
Families screamed for help from rooftops Tuesday in a flooded city as U.N. peacekeepers and rescue convoys tried in vain to reach them.

Southeast U.S. braces for Hanna, then Ike

Storm leaves 61 dead in Haiti; U.S. coast prepares for high winds, rain

WILMINGTON, N.C. - Some Southeastern states declared emergencies and officials urged residents to head inland Thursday as Tropical Storm Hanna headed toward the U.S. Atlantic coast, where it could bring high winds and rain from South Carolina all the way to Maine.

Meanwhile, disaster planners cast a wary eye to a suddenly ferocious-looking Hurricane Ike strengthening in the Atlantic. And with power outages and other problems from Hurricane Gustav still lingering in Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other relief groups could soon find themselves juggling fallout from three storms.

Rain and wind from Hanna could start as early as Friday night in the South, where some residents shuttered houses and stocked up on food and sandbags, coastal parks closed and schools canceled events and changed sports schedules.

Officials did not order people from their homes in advance of the storm, which was expected to make landfall early Saturday.

Path of destruction
Hanna left a deadly trail of destruction in Haiti before picking up a little speed as it headed from the Bahamas toward the southeastern U.S. By Thursday afternoon, Hanna was about 670 miles south-southeast of Wilmington.

The storm was blamed for at least 61 deaths in Haiti, mostly from flooding, the Caribbean country's Civil Protection Department said. Department spokesman Abel Nazaire said 21 of the deaths were in Gonaives, Haiti's fourth largest city, which has been almost entirely cut off by floodwaters

Bahamas National Security Minister Tommy Turnquest canceled all leave for the Bahamas Royal Defence Force to keep soldiers on standby for disaster response.

In the U.S., the governors of Virginia and North Carolina declared states of emergency, freeing up state resources for storm response. South Carolina opened several emergency shelters and restricted port hours and Gov. Mark Sanford urged people to leave flood-prone areas and mobile homes in two northern counties by Friday afternoon. In North Carolina, some schools prepared to open shelters and officials planned to close ports Friday.

Still, some coastal residents scoffed at what appeared to be a storm that could hit as a low-level hurricane.

Instead, they turned to the next worry brewing in the Atlantic: Ike, which strengthened quickly from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane Wednesday. Forecasters said it was too early to say if and where Ike might threaten land.

"Ike is a very scary storm," said Mike Hughes, spokesman for a North Carolina power company that closely tracks hurricanes as they head through the Atlantic.

Strain on resources
The line of storms comes on the heels of Gustav, whose aftermath had Louisiana residents living in shelters and without power. Aid agencies now face the task of trying to assist everyone potentially at risk from all the storms.

In 2004, the then-head of FEMA, David Paulison, said three major hurricanes in just over a month had strained �?but did not ultimately hobble �?the agency's resources and staffing.

On Thursday, FEMA officials said they prepared in advance for this season, sending teams to Louisiana while others planned for Hanna.

The American Red Cross was moving supplies, equipment and people into areas Hanna might affect, said spokesman Pat McCrummen. McCrummen said the organization has distributed 3.5 million meals to people affected by Gustav and supplies for the East Coast were in nearby warehouses.

Hanna chugged just east of the Bahamas Thursday with winds near 65 mph, though forecasters said it could return to hurricane strength Friday before reaching the U.S. coast.

A hurricane watch was issued for Edisto Beach, S.C., north to Okracoke Inlet, N.C., while a tropical storm watch was issued from Edisto Beach south to Altamaha Sound, Ga.

Preparing for landfall
South Carolina planned to send 70 state troopers to monitor traffic along evacuation routes. The state National Guard said its troops were not asked to assist and would likely be released from duty. But in Charleston, south of where the storm was expected to hit, officials passed out 10,000 sandbags and urged residents in low-lying areas to head inland.

Hundreds of miles north, emergency managers in New England also planned for Hanna, which forecasters said could hit this weekend with heavy rain and strong winds. In Providence, R.I., workers cleared storm drains and stocked up on sandbags and residents were urged to stock up on batteries and first aid supplies.

In Massachusetts, emergency managers also kept a close eye on the storm track.

"If nothing else it's a good dress rehearsal for Ike if Ike were to come," said Peter Judge, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency.

In Kure Beach, N.C., a few houses, a trailer and a real estate office were boarded up and the town hall had metal storm shutters.

Jimbo Andrews nursed a Coke at a local watering hole where bartender Kassie Jones made plans for a Friday night hurricane party. Andrews said he keeps hurricane supplies at his house year-round and planned to leave if Ike hit.

As for Hanna? It looked to get him out of some weekend yard work.

"No sense in going to the trouble when you got a storm coming," he said.

Ike storm surge begins; Houston hunkers down

People still in low-lying areas warned they could ‘face certain death�?/H2>

GALVESTON, Texas - Hurricane Ike steamed through the Gulf of Mexico on Friday on a track toward the nation’s fourth-largest city, where authorities told residents to brace rather than flee, even as people in low-lying areas closer to the gulf were told to leave or “face certain death.�?

Forecasters warned that a potentially deadly 20-foot wall of water could make its way inland, and coastal towns were already seeing a storm surge at midday Friday. In the upscale West End of Galveston, the first floors of houses were underwater, and streets were impassable because of debris scattered by the surge.

The Coast Guard began airlifting several dozen residents from their homes at Bolivar Peninsula along the Texas coast Friday after the wind and rain became too much for them.

Ike’s 105-mph winds and potential 50-foot waves at first prevented the Coast Guard from attempting a risky helicopter rescue of 22 people aboard a large freighter hauling petroleum coke that broke down about 90 miles southeast of Galveston. By midday, aircraft were dispatched to try to airlift the crew.

Ike was expected to arrive around midnight Friday, and forecasters said it could take 12 hours to move out of southeast Texas. But the massive system was already buffeting Texas and Louisiana, causing flooding around Galveston and even along the Louisiana coast, which was still recovering from Hurricane Gustav.

The National Weather Service warned that people not heeding evacuation orders in low-lying parts of the coast “may face certain death�?and that many homes on the coast would be destroyed.

Waves over Galveston seawall
In Galveston, residents nervously eyed the seashore as white waves as tall as 15 feet bashed over the seawall and crept into clusters of houses perched on stilts.

“I’ve never seen it like that before. I’m scared, I’m leaving,�?said Roy Patel, manager of the Economy Motel. He had boarded up his on the sea front and was headed to the mainland by car.

It was also enough to scare away Tony Munoz and his wife, Jennifer, who went down to the water to take pictures and then decided that riding out the storm wasn’t a good idea after all.

“We started seeing water come up on the streets, then we saw this. We just loaded up everything, got the pets, we’re leaving,�?Tony Munoz said. “I've been through storms before but this is different.�?

Galveston, a barrier island and beach town about 50 miles southeast of downtown Houston, was the scene of the nation’s deadliest hurricane, the great storm of 1900, which left at least 6,000 dead.

The current storm is so big it could inflict a punishing blow even in those areas that do not get a direct hit.

But officials in Houston took a calculated risk and told people to stay put. That order was an attempt to avoid a repeat of the chaos and death that ensued after residents were ordered to evacuate Houston when Hurricane Rita threatened the city in 2005. In that instance, the number of deaths attributed to the evacuation was more than 10 times the toll from the storm.

Forecasters warned that because of Ike’s size and the shallow Texas coastal waters, it could produce waves of perhaps 50 feet. It could also dump 10 inches or more

It will be, in candor, something that people will be scared of,�?Houston Mayor Bill White warned. “A number of people in this community have not experienced the magnitude of these winds.�?

If the storm stays on its projected path, it could head up the Houston ship channel and through Galveston Bay, which Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called a nightmare scenario.

At 2 p.m. ET Friday, Ike was a Category 2 storm with maximum sustained winds near 105 mph. It was centered about 165 miles southeast of Galveston, moving west-northwest near 12 mph. A turn toward the northwest was expected later in the day, with a turn toward the north expected Saturday.

Evacuation orders were issued Thursday for coastal parts of the Houston area and Galveston Island. They joined residents of at least nine districts in flood-prone areas of Harris County, in which Houston is located, along with hundreds of thousands of fellow Texans in counties up and down the coastline, who were also warned to leave.

Stores across Houston reported that they were running low on batteries, drinking water and other storm supplies, and many grocery stores were closing early Friday afternoon.

The oil and gas industry was closely watching the storm because it was headed straight for the nation’s biggest complex of refineries and petrochemical plants. The upper Texas coast accounts for one-fifth of U.S. refining capacity.

Forecasters at the private Planalytics weather service saw “major and long-term damage likely at the major refining cities.�?

Ike’s potential impact

The Department of Homeland Security provided this assessment of the potential impact of Hurricane Ike to NBC News on Friday:

Storm surge
�?572,000 people within storm surge area
�?6 drinking water plants affected by storm surge
�?34 wastewater treatment facilities affected by storm surge
�?54 police stations, 89 fire stations and 32 ambulance services affected by storm surge
�?10 hospitals with more than 10 beds affected by storm surge
�?47 nursing homes affected by storm surge
�?7 wire centers affected by storm surge
�?140 electric power substations affected by storm surge
�?48 non-nuclear generating units affected by surge
�?10 industrial plants including oil refineries and chemical plants are co-located with 41 generators affected by storm surge

Power failures
�?5.2 million customers may lose power in Texas
�?99 drinking water plants in outage area (only 14 plants serve more than 50,000)
�?More than 1,500 wastewater treatment facilities are in outage area
�?799 police stations, 1,973 fire stations and  641 ambulance services within outage area
�?256 hospitals with more than 50 beds within outage area
�?1,263 Nursing Homes within electric power outage area

Petroleum, natural gas
�?95 percent of Gulf of Mexico oil and natural gas production suspended
�?1.25 million barrels per day of oil production (6 percent) of U.S. petroleum demand
�?6.9 billion cubic feet per day of natural gas production (11 percent of U.S. daily average natural gas demand