Gutsy gustav is making his presense felt I guess, throwing around ships and trying to break canals and walls surrounding it. If such a thing does happen, we'll be in more danger as the canals would take considerable time to be mended and we will have another financial attcak staring at us.
Hurricane Gustav has made landfall south-west of New Orleans as waves lapped over a levee and three vessels broke dangerously loose of their moorings in a city canal, officials said.
"This is the biggest challenge we have at the moment: that those ships and barges that have broken free don't do any damage to the canal walls," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said, fearing a repeat of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The eye of the massive storm crossed land just west-south-west of Cocodrie, Louisiana, about 110 kilometres south-west of New Orleans, the National Hurricane Centre said.
"The storm is weakening, but it is slowing. That is bad news," National Weather Service meteorologist Jody James said.
The region faces "several more hours of rain" and "serious flooding" is possible, he said.
Asked if Gustav could be as bad as Katrina, which struck New Orleans nearly exactly three years ago, James said: "It's a little early to say. Katrina was a category four downgraded to three just before landfall. Gustav is a little bit weaker."
The expert added "We are watching the levees."
Gustav weakened to a category two storm on a five-level scale as it neared colder coastal waters, but forecasters warned of an "extremely dangerous" water surge of up to 4.2 meters, enough to worry officials after Katrina burst New Orleans' levees in 2005 and flooded the city for days.
Water was nearly up to the lip of an earthen levee protecting the Upper Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Intense winds were blowing waves over the top of the wall even as the strongest part of the storm was yet to hit shore.
"We are not out of the woods," Mr Nagin said. "We still have some critical time between now and tonight."
Two boats and a barge had broken free in the Industrial Canal, triggering fears that the vessels may crash through the waterway's wall in a repeat of what happened during Katrina three years ago.
Boats and barges were supposed to be cleared from the canals as a precaution against them becoming battering rams that could breach canal walls.
"I just don't get it," mr Nagin said. "One report I have is that one of these vessels was moved in just yesterday, which just blows me away. I don't know if it is illegal, but it should be."
'No excuses'
Meanwhile, a top aide to US President George W Bush warned of "weaknesses" in New Orleans' levee system and said anyone who stayed in the city in the face of Hurricane Gustav had "no excuses."
"There should not be any excuses. If people stayed in New Orleans, it was their choice," Federal Emergency Management Agency director David Paulison said as Mr Bush travelled there to assess the Government response to Gustav.
Mr Paulison cited "unprecedented cooperation" among Government agencies and the private sector, saying disaster response officials had learned tough lessons from their botched response to killer Hurricane Katrina.
"What it allows us to do is share information of what's going on, so we don't end up with what happened in Katrina, with different agencies doing things and others not knowing what's happening," he told reporters.
Mr Paulison, speaking aboard Bush's Air Force One presidential airplane, said authorities had pre-deployed disaster response teams and equipment instead of waiting until after the storm passes, as was the case in 2005.
"That made a tremendous difference in the evacuation process. This was one of the most successful and coordinated evacuations that I've seen," said Mr Paulison, who briefed Mr Bush for one hour aboard the airplane.
Asked about New Orleans's levee system, Mr Paulison said the US Army Corps of Engineers "is saying the levees are much stronger, they've raised them a lot, much higher than they were during Katrina. However, there's still weaknesses in that levee system. It's not where it needs to be."
Asked whether the US President, whose popularity nose-dived after Katrina, was satisfied with the Government response to Gustav, White House press secretary Dana Perino replied "Yes, so far."
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