Gustav strengthens again off Cuba
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Resident Jack Noehl throws a sandbag into the back of his truck as he prepares for Gustav in Luling, Louisiana. (Getty Images/AFP: Stephen Morton)
Hurricane Gustav has strengthened to Category 2 as it churns across warm Caribbean waters toward western Cuba, the US National Hurricane Centre has said.
The storm's most likely track has it going ashore west of New Orleans on Tuesday morning.
Forecasters at the Miami-based centre said Gustav's top winds had reached near 155 kilometres per hour as it passed about 85 kilometre north-east of Grand Cayman Island.
The storm, which killed up to 78 people in the Caribbean, was plowing toward superheated waters south of Cuba where it could absorb enough energy to strengthen into a major hurricane before ripping through the heavy concentration of US oil and natural gas platforms off Louisiana.
While long-range storm forecasts are prone to errors, the US National Hurricane Centre said late Friday that Gustav could be a "major" Category 4 hurricane on the five-stage Saffir-Simpson scale of hurricane intensity within 48 hours.
US emergency officials, mindful of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina three years ago, warned that Gustav was expected to be accompanied by a five-to-nine metre storm surge along the Gulf Coast, and said four states in its potential path were expected to begin large-scale evacuations.
"This storm has the potential for being a very dangerous storm," said Bill Irwin, a program director with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Katrina was a monstrous Category 5 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico before coming ashore near New Orleans as a Category 3 on August 29, 2005, breaching protective levees and flooding the city famed as the birthplace of jazz.
The devastation exposed deep poverty, racial tensions and federal incompetence as thousands of people were left stranded without aid.
- Reuters
