Once more Mayor Nagin delivered a blunt message to the citizens of New Orleans, saying that the city remains in the path of Hurricane Gustav, pleading with residents to leave the city.

“Nothing has changed as far as we can tell from the direction of the storm,” said Nagin, who was flanked by members of the City Council and his staff at a press conference at City Hall. 

“It is a Cat-3 right now – a Catergory-3 – but everyone that we have talked to on the latest updates still say that this storm is going to be extremely powerful as a Category-4 storm with winds a 150 mph, sometimes gusting much higher than that.”

The mayor found some solace in that Gustav was moving faster, which would make it possibly pass the city faster and hopefully causing less damage. “It is not much better, but a little better,” he said. Because New Orleans is on the east side of the Gustav, often where winds are the strongest, Nagin said that tornadoes could begin to hit the area late Sunday and early Monday. 

A dusk-to-dawn curfew will begin Sunday at sundown, Nagin said.  He had particularly harsh words for looters.  “Looters will go directly to jail,” he said, adding, perhaps for effect, that they would go directly to Angola Prison.

For those thinking of staying Nagin warned that FEMA trailers leftover from Katrina, which are only rated for winds of 35-40 mph, could become projectiles. “When this storm hits, those trailers will move around quite a bit.  As a matter of fact, most of them will become projectiles and start to fly around the city.”

Nagin reiterated his call for New Orleanians to heed his warning and flee the city. 

City Council President Jackie Clarkson echoed the mayor, saying emphatically, “This is urgent; this is desperate and I’ve lived through a lot of storms in my lifetime. Please, listen to the mayor and evacuate.”

Approximately 14-15,000 people have been evacuated out of New Orleans by the city’s evacuation service, according to the mayor.

The mayor said they are planning to stop officially picking up people at the city’s evacuation pickup points, but added that he hoped they would be able to provide limited bus service to 2 or 3 p.m.  At the pickup sites, people are brought staging areas where they moved out of the city either by train or bus.