Evacuees attend to last-minute details

• By ALLEN M. JOHNSON JR.
• New Orleans bureau
• Published: Aug 31, 2008 - UPDATED: 10:00 p.m.

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NEW ORLEANS — On the morning of the first evacuation of Louisiana’s entire coastal population, cancer research scientist Ashok Pullikuth enjoyed a cup of coffee on his front porch in Uptown and related his decision to flee Hurricane Gustav.

“I decided (Saturday) afternoon when I saw there was no way it was going to slow down and I saw the city evacuating,” Pullikuth said of the dangerous storm now poised just off the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.

He said he went to his office at LSU Health Sciences Center and checked to make sure the laboratory was secure and to complete some experiments.

When Hurricane Katrina hit three years ago, Pullikuth said he lost 11 years of work, including rare collections of yeast strains and special types of cells for cancer research. “And I lost my career progression too,” he chuckled.

He said he planned to join several friends at noon, evacuating to Baton Rouge. He then passed the time showing a visitor a map of his family’s coastal home in Calicut, India, far south of the Punjab family home of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Meanwhile, the governor appeared live on local television, with the latest news on contraflow evacuation routes and Gustav — still barreling toward Louisiana.

Outbound interstates were filled with motorists fleeing the city.

“For the first time in history, the entire Louisiana coastal population will be evacuated due to the impending threat of Hurricane Gustav,” according to a State Police news release.

At Louis Armstrong International Airport, airlines and passengers hurried to meet a 6 p.m. shut-down deadline as the storm approached. “American (Airlines) has the last flight out,” airport spokesperson Michele Wilcut said. “It’s going to Dallas. They are all doing the short hop because we are not re-fueling” arriving flights.

At City Hall, Mayor Nagin announced that the city-assisted evacuation of people without transportation would be extended to 3 p.m.

The extension followed the mayor’s Saturday night declaration that at least 50 percent of the city’s 325,000 residents had failed to heed repeated warnings.  Nagin said Gustav could be the “storm of the century,” with destructive powers far exceeding Hurricane Katrina, which flooded most of New Orleans Aug. 29, 2005.

More than 350 citizens were evacuated from the Union Passenger Terminal by bus or rail, between midnight and 6 a.m. Sunday, city officials said. Overall, more than 10,000 people were evacuated in 24 hours — far short of the estimated 30,000 residents that city officials predicted they could relocate, safely.

In neighboring St. Bernard Parish, closed to unauthorized visitors since 4 p.m. Saturday, 20 evacuees waited in a parking lot Sunday for the last bus out of the near-empty suburb. Some had been there for hours. Two armed soldiers stood nearby.