Gustav downgraded to Category Two hurricane

Torrential rain and winds from Hurricane Gustav lashed the U.S. Gulf coast early Monday after nearly two million people fled the killer storm.

Hundreds of troops were sent into New Orleans after what is being called the biggest evacuation in U.S. history. Three critically ill people were reported to have died as they were being moved from the danger zone, the Louisiana governor said.

Oil production platforms were shut down, the Republican Party suspended the start of its presidential election convention and President George W. Bush headed for Texas to monitor emergency preparations for Gustav which has killed more than 80 people in Dominican Republic, Haiti and Jamaica.

Reports of power outages in New Orleans started after wind and rain began hitting the city -- still struggling from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which struck almost exactly three years ago.

Louisiana officials said there were about 750 National Guard troops in New Orleans if a new rescue operation was needed. Mayor Ray Nagin on Sunday ordered a sundown curfew in the city and vowed to throw looters into prison.

"The outer edge of the storm is already over the Mississippi Delta and going in toward New Orleans now, according to radar," National Hurricane Center meteorologist Patricia Wallace told AFP.

The eye of the storm was not expected to make landfall until later Monday. At 0600 GMT, the heart of Gustav was 275 kilometers (170 miles) southeast of New Orleans, moving towards the city at 26km (16 miles) an hour.

Storm force winds from Gustav extended as far as 350km (220 miles) from the eye, the center said.

Forecasters had predicted a slight strengthening as Gustav’s eye powered across the Gulf of Mexico toward the coast.

"This is a serious storm," Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said in a final appeal to the people who remained in New Orleans despite the many government warnings.

People in the state capital of Baton Rouge and other inland areas have been warned to watch for storm-spawned tornados.

Gustav wreaked havoc with the U.S. political calendar, forcing U.S. President George W. Bush to cancel plans to appear at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota.

The U.S. leader said Sunday that he would instead travel to Texas to monitor the storm.

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain drastically scaled back the program for the first day of the convention Monday, saying all activities would be suspended "except for those absolutely necessary."

"I hope and pray we will be able to resume some of our normal operations as quickly as possible," he told reporters from St. Louis, after returning from a tour of relief preparations in Mississippi.

Military and civilian disaster relief operations were in full swing with the memory of the destruction wrought by Katrina, and the local and federal government’s botched response.

Katrina made landfall near New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, smashing poorly-built levees surrounding the city and causing massive floods that destroyed tens of thousands of homes and killed nearly 1,800.

New Orleans mayor Nagin told local television that the city had become a "ghost town" after a massive evacuation campaign, and that only about 10,000 residents remained.

Some of those who left said they felt reassured.

"The mayor assured us our property will be safe," Wilson Patterson, 48, said as he prepared to board a bus with wheelchair-bound 84-year-old Earline Martin.

"We don’t want to get caught up in the Katrina craziness," he said, recalling the lawlessness that swept New Orleans in 2005.

Jindal said rescue teams were in place.

"We will begin search-and-rescue operations as soon as we safely can. That would be when winds are below 140 miles per hour," he said, which probably will occur "late Monday".

"We’ve got ... boots on the ground, eyes on the ground. So before that, even before we can get into the air, before we can get boats on the water, we do have people on the ground to make sure that were doing everything that we can to save every single life."

Jindal told reporters there were unconfirmed reports that three critically ill patients died while being transported to safer ground.

"They had to weigh the risk between sheltering in place and evacuating and made the decision they thought was best for their patients," he said.

Photo: AP