Hurricane Gustav batters US coast.

Storm force winds hit New Orleans

Hurricane Gustav has made landfall south-west of New Orleans, battering the US Gulf coast with torrential rain.

Despite being downgraded to a Category Two storm, Gustav snapped power cables and choked storm drains in New Orleans.

A sea surge was feared and water was clearing levees, but they were expected to hold, according to officials.

"We are cautiously optimistic... we won't see catastrophic wall failure," said Col Jeff Bedey, head of the unit responsible for flood defences.

US President George W Bush has flown to Austin, Texas, about 400 miles (640km) west of where the storm made landfall in Louisiana, to oversee the government response.

"This storm has yet to pass. It's a serious event," he said at a briefing by emergency officials. But he insisted that the emergency response to Gustav "is a lot better than during Katrina" - the hurricane that wreaked havoc three years ago.

Mr Bush praised those who had heeded the warnings to evacuate, saying he understood how hard it was for citizens to "pull up stakes".

Ghost town

An estimated two million people have headed inland from the Louisiana coast to escape the hurricane - the largest evacuation in state history.

Many New Orleans residents have fled, with only 10,000 residents left from a population of 200,000.

Tens of thousands are also reported to have left coastal Mississippi, Alabama and south-eastern Texas.

The BBC's Kevin Connolly, who is in New Orleans, says in some streets the storm drains are already beginning to choke through the sheer weight of rain.

It is a ghost town - with only traffic lights at an intersection flickering from red to green and back again; there are no cars, our correspondent says.

The NHC said Gustav's winds could bring "extremely dangerous" storm surges of up to 14ft (4.2m) above normal. Isolated tornadoes are also possible in the area.

Levees in and around New Orleans were expected to hold, but the storm's surge could overtop the defences and partially flood the city, said Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman Harvey Johnson.

Damage from Gustav "will be a catastrophe by the time you add it all up," he told the Associated Press news agency.

"We don't expect the loss of life, certainly, that we saw in Katrina," he said. "But we are expecting a lot of homes to be damaged, a lot of infrastructure to be flooded, and damaged severely."

In 2005, three-quarters of New Orleans was flooded by a storm surge that claimed more than 1,800 lives in coastal areas.

The Category Three storm Katrina swept away the city's levees under a wall of mud and water.

Few remain

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal issued a final plea on Sunday to those who decided to stay and ride out the storm.

In New Orleans, a dusk-to-dawn curfew is in force. The 7,000-strong Louisiana National Guard has been mobilised and support requested from other states.

Crime was a major problem in the New Orleans area in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, which hit the city three years ago, causing disastrous floods.

The New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagin, has warned looters will be sent to jail.

Our correspondent says the mood among the city's remaining residents is of hope and fear.

Sandra Taylor, from Lafayette, Indiana, is visiting her daughter, who had a baby nine days ago.

"Where we live it's not in a flood zone, and we're quite sheltered," she said. "There's a few that have battened down, and sealed all the windows and stuff and disappeared. But there's a lot of other neighbours around, so I think we're just going to play the three little pigs - if one house blows away, we'll shift to the next one."

Cian Heasley, who has joined a few other friends at a bar in New Orleans, says he is "waiting out the storm with two generators, a lot of liquor and food".

"We feel quite safe at the moment. There aren't any windows but there are two sturdy doors so we feel secure. We're just drinking and watching TV and staying calm really," he said.

Levee worry

Restaurant worker Dustin Goza agreed.

"In some ways it's good that people are being given a chance to prepare but I think it's also an overreaction," he said.

"I've put some tape up in preparation around windows but that's it."

Concern for those facing the hurricane has prompted the Republican party to scale back its national convention where Senator John McCain is due to accept the party's nomination for president at the event in St Paul, Minnesota later this week.

Mr McCain told his party that "this was one of those moments in history where you have to put America first. We will not see the mistakes of Katrina repeated".

There will be no political speeches on the first day of the convention but Laura Bush, the first lady and Cindy McCain, John McCain's wife, will speak about contributing to a relief effort.

Out in the Gulf of Mexico, most oil production has been shut down. Three years ago, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ravaged the region's oil infrastructure and sent oil prices soaring.

Gustav has already claimed the lives of more than 80 people in the Caribbean, causing widespread damage in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Jamaica over the past week.

In Cuba, the storm brought extensive flooding and some severe damage, but no reports of deaths.