HURRICANE SEASON 2008

FEARS OF ANOTHER KATRINA

Gustav's approach had stirred uneasy comparisons to Katrina, the most costly hurricane in U.S. history, which killed some 1,500 people and caused over $80 billion in damage almost exactly three years earlier.

President George W. Bush, who was criticized for the slow relief efforts after Katrina, canceled his appearance at the Republican convention as scheduled instead a visit to Texas on Monday to oversee emergency response effort.

McCain went to Gulf on Sunday to survey preparations and ordered political speeches canceled on Monday for his nominating convention, apparently concerned that television images of a choreographed Republican celebration while the storm was hitting Louisiana would be seen as out of touch.

Long lines of cars and buses streamed out of New Orleans on Sunday after its mayor, Ray Nagin, ordered an evacuation of the city of 239,000 and told residents, "This is still a big, ugly storm, still strong and I encourage everyone to leave."

New Orleans resident Vanessa Jones, 50, said she had planned to stay but changed her mind after watching the news all night. "I can't take a chance because so many people died in Katrina," she said as she prepared to board a bus headed to an unknown destination.

The government lined up trains and hundreds of buses to evacuate 30,000 people who could not leave on their own and Nagin said 15,000 had been removed from the city, including hundreds in wheelchairs.

Flights from New Orleans and other Gulf Coast cities were canceled on Monday as the storm bore down on the region.

Residents boarded up the windows of their shops and homes before leaving town, while others hunkered down as "hold-outs" with stockpiled food, water and shotguns to ward off looters.

"I saw quite a bit of looting last time with Katrina, even 30 minutes after the winds had stopped," said construction contractor Norwood Thornton, who opted to stay behind to protect his home in New Orleans' historic Garden District.

In its run through the Caribbean, Gustav earlier killed at least 86 people in the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.

The U.S. Coast Guard reported the first storm-related death in Florida on Sunday, where a man fell overboard as his craft ran into heavy waves.

Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which followed it three weeks later, wrecked more than 100 Gulf oil platforms.

(Additional reporting by Tom Brown in Miami and Bruce Nichols, Chris Baltimore and Erwin Seba in Houston; Writing by Kevin Krolicki; editing by Jim Loney and Kieran Murray)