WORLD> America
Hurricane Gustav's eye closes in on Louisiana coastline
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-01 23:27

At 8 a.m. EDT, the storm's center was located about 85 miles south of New Orleans and was moving northwest at 16 mph.

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The city of Franklin, about 100 miles west of New Orleans, was bracing for a direct hit if Gustav stays on its current track. Dozens of sheriff's deputies, along with state troopers and guardsmen, waited at an emergency operations center inside the courthouse.

"We don't rely on backup. If it comes, great, but we don't trust the federal government. They can never get it quite right," said state Rep. Sam Jones.

He estimated that at least three-quarters of the city's roughly 9,000 residents evacuated for Gustav. For good reason: Three years ago, Hurricane Rita flooded up to 200 homes in the city.

Tropical storm-force winds reached the southeastern tip of the state early Monday morning, but local officials said they had not received any distress calls or reports of unexpected flooding.

In Plaquemines Parish, south of New Orleans, officials built an emergency levee to prevent flooding along a highway that runs along the Mississippi River, sheriff's spokesman Maj. John Marie said.

But it was extremely quiet. "It's really remarkable, we got almost everybody out," he said.

In New Orleans, officials were anxiously watching to see what kind of storm surge the city would face: If forecasts hold, the city could experience a storm surge of only 4 to 6 feet, compared to a surge of 10 to 14 feet at the site of landfall, said Corey Walton, a hurricane support meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center.

Katrina, by comparison, brought a storm surge of 25 feet, causing levees to break. While the Army Corps of Engineers has shored up some of the city's levee system since then, fears this time center on the city's West Bank, where levee repairs have not been completed.