NEW ORLEANS (CNN) - Nearly all of the roughly 2 million people in the New Orleans area had cleared out ahead of Hurricane Gustav on Sunday night as the storm chugged toward a likely strike on the Louisiana coast.

Road, rail and air links out of New Orleans began to close as the first storm bands began to strike the city. But more than 1.9 million people had fled the city and its surrounding parishes by Sunday night, and fewer than 10,000 people were thought to remain in New Orleans, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said, citing the city's police chief.

National Guard troops and police were still combing the city broadcasting evacuation messages in English, Vietnamese and Spanish, he said. And Lt. Col. Jerry Sneed, the city's emergency operations chief, said 18,000 residents without transportation on their own had been evacuated by government agencies - efforts that were stepped up after the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Meanwhile, three years after their response to Katrina received widespread criticism, Bush administration officials scrambled to prepare for Gustav's arrival. President Bush canceled plans to attend this week's Republican National Convention in Minnesota, and GOP officials curtailed their plans for at least the first day of the event as the storm neared.

At 11 p.m. ET, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center projected the storm would strike land southwest of New Orleans sometime Monday. The Category 3 storm was packing top winds of 115 mph (185 km/h), with hurricane-force winds extending about 70 miles from the eye.

Gustav was centered about 220 miles (360 km) south-southeast of New Orleans, the National Hurricane Center in Miami reported, and it was moving northwest across the central Gulf of Mexico at 16 mph.

By CNN Senior Correspondent Allan Chernoff

LAKE CHARLES, Louisiana (CNN) - Hurricane Gustav may strike Louisiana with fury, but around Lake Charles, 200 miles west of New Orleans, few residents will be around to witness the storm.

Memories of Hurricane Rita, which hit this region head on three years ago, are turning Calcasieu Parish - population 195,000 - into a series of ghost towns.

Hospital patients have been airlifted out of state. Twelve-hundred prisoners were bused north this weekend. One, chained and shackled, jumped out of a bus traveling 45 mph.

NEW ORLEANS (CNN) - Road, rail and air links out of New Orleans began to close Sunday ahead of Hurricane Gustav, which was sweeping toward the Gulf Coast with 115-mph winds Sunday evening.

More than 1.9 million people had fled the city and its surrounding parishes by Sunday night, and fewer than 10,000 people were thought to remain in New Orleans, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said, citing the city's police chief. National Guard troops and police were still combing the city broadcasting evacuation messages in English, Vietnamese and Spanish, he said.

Lt. Col. Jerry Sneed, the city's emergency operations chief, said 18,000 residents without transportation on their own had been evacuated by government agencies - efforts that were stepped up after the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

But the 24-mile-long causeway over Lake Pontchartrain closed at 7 p.m. (8 p.m. ET) as police topped the bridge - part of the city's levee system - with sandbags, a police dispatcher told CNN. The last flights out of the city's airport were slated to take off earlier Sunday evening, and highways out of town had been packed with evacuees from Louisiana and Mississippi all day.

"It was bumper-to-bumper for about 10 hours trying to get out," said Roberto Ascencio, a restaurant owner in the New Orleans suburb of Gretna. He said he, his wife and daughter packed their pets and whatever else would fit in their car and headed east on Interstate 10 as Gustav neared.

"It was very light when I left my house. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake," he said. "As soon as we hit the interstate, it was bumper-to-bumper. It was very very slow moving."

At 8 p.m. ET, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center projected the storm would strike land southwest of New Orleans sometime Monday. The Category 3 storm was about 260 miles (415 km) south-southeast of the city, the National Hurricane Center in Miami reported, and it was moving across the central Gulf of Mexico at 17 mph.

The storm was packing top winds of 115 mph (185 km/h), with hurricane-force winds extending about 70 miles from the eye.

Meanwhile, three years after his response to Hurricane Katrina received widespread criticism, President Bush canceled plans to attend this week's Republican National Convention as his administration scrambled to prepare for Gustav's arrival. The GOP also curtailed its plans for the convention as the storm neared.

In Mississippi, which took the brunt of Katrina's winds and storm surge three years ago, Gov. Haley Barbour said government agencies were "10 times better prepared" than before - but "that doesn't mean everything is going to go right," he said.

"Anybody who thinks everything is going to go perfect just doesn't know what they're talking about," Barbour said.

Maps of Gustav's path show that it could strike southern Louisiana and other areas battered by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Katrina, a Category 3 storm, flooded most of New Orleans, flattened beach towns in Mississippi and killed more than 1,800 people.

Jindal said the city's protective levees "will barely hold or barely be overtopped" if forecasters' predictions hold. But the weaknesses remaining in Louisiana's levee system since Katrina could leave Louisiana open to an even worse disaster unless Gustav changes course, a leading researcher said Sunday.

Louisiana State University Professor Ivor van Heerden said state and federal officials could have done a lot more to repair damaged levees and restore the coastal wetlands and barrier islands that can blunt the impact of a hurricane in the intervening three years.

"If the models are correct, Gustav will destroy what Katrina and Rita did not," van Heerden said. "This is going to be flooding of a much larger area than Katrina."

As deputy director of LSU's Hurricane Center, van Heerden warned of the catastrophic consequences a major hurricane would have on New Orleans long before Katrina struck three years ago.

Gustav already has been blamed for more than 60 deaths in the Caribbean, including 51 in southwestern Haiti. It struck Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Cuba before crossing into the Gulf of Mexico and growing into a major hurricane.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation and a curfew and warned against looting. Nagin, who was widely criticized for failing to prepare for Katrina, said he curfew would continue until the threat of the storm passes, and he warned that looters would be dealt with harshly.

"Anybody who's caught looting in the city of New Orleans will go directly to Angola," he said, referring to Louisiana's notorious maximum-security prison.

But some, like Louisiana resident Nick Dominque, planned to remain behind. Dominque, 30, told CNN that he had weathered Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and needed to look after his parents in the southern part of the state.

"They think that they can handle any storm that hits, so I'm going to bunker down and stay with them," he said. "I never thought after Rita that I would try to ride out another storm. But here I am again."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who was overseeing evacuation efforts from New Orleans, said most people have chosen to leave, either by car, bus, ambulance or air.

"I was reading in the paper about people who say, 'No I'm going to stay.' I think that's pretty stupid, but I can't stop that from happening," he said. "I'm hoping it's a very small number of people."

Bush warned Gulf Coast residents Sunday that a "serious" storm was headed their way and announced plans to head to Texas to meet with emergency workers and evacuees. Both the president and Vice President Dick Cheney canceled plans to attend the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, and convention events have been cut back sharply as the storm approached.

"This is a time when we have to do away with our party politics and we have to act as Americans," said Arizona Sen. John McCain, the party's presidential nominee-in-waiting. The party would suspend most of Monday's activities "except for those absolutely necessary," McCain said from St. Louis, Missouri.

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said the convention would have to be called to order and its credentials committee report received so delegates can formally nominate McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

"I would say that the main information I can give you today is that owing to the fact that the senator has asked us to take our Republican hats off and put our American hats on, tomorrow's program will be business only, and we'll refrain from any political rhetoric that would be traditional in an opening session of a convention," McCain campaign adviser Rick Davis said.

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (CNN) - Less than 10,000 people are estimated to remain in New Orleans Sunday night, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Sunday night, citing New Orleans Police Chief Warren Riley.

Jindal also noted some "good news" in the approach of Hurricane Gustav to an area devasted three years ago by Hurricane Katrina - if forecasts are "100 percent accurate ... the levees will barely hold or barely be overtopped."

"I want to emphasize, if the storm shifts slightly east, you could have very significant flooding in these areas," he said.

Jindal said more than 200,000 people left New Orleans early Sunday, and National Guard and police forces are still combing the city broadcasting evacuation messages in English, Vietnamese and Spanish.

In the whole of the Louisiana coastal area, authorities estimate 95 percent of the people have evacuated, the governor said.

"That'll put the total a little over 1.9 million people," he said.

Jindal also acknowledged the unconfirmed reports of three critical-care patients who died during evacuation.

"When critically ill patients are evacuated, it certainly can be very risky," he said. ... We've got unconfirmed reports at this time of three deaths of critical care patients that occurred during the evacuation of those patients - two in Lake Charles, one in New Orleans."

Katrina killed more than 1,800 people dead in 2005.

Earlier, Jindal said the Louisiana coast could expect tropical storm force winds as early as Sunday night.

"The important thing though is for people to take these warnings, take this opportunity very seriously. Now is the time to get out of harm's way," he said.

All but three of Louisiana's 64 parishes had declared an emergency, and Jindal said nearly every parish along the coast had issued a mandatory evacuation.

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (CNN) - Republicans suspended most of the opening-day agenda at their national presidential convention as Hurricane Gustav neared the Gulf Coast, Sen. John McCain, the party's nominee-in-waiting, announced Sunday.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney canceled their planned Monday speeches at the event, where McCain will formally be awarded the GOP presidential nomination.

"This is a time when we have to do away with our party politics and we have to act as Americans. We have to join the 300 million other Americans on behalf of our fellow citizens. It's a time for action. So, we're going to suspend most of our activities tomorrow except for those absolutely necessary," McCain, of Arizona, said in an announcement broadcast from St. Louis, Missouri.

Mike Duncan, chairman of the Republican National Committee, said the convention still must be called to order and necessary committees must report to get the nomination process moving.

"We will adopt our rules that allow us to go forward and allow us to go forward in the future. We will elect our officers of the convention, and we will adopt our party platform," Duncan said. "Those are essentials for us to be able to constitute before we can nominate the president and vice president. That's the action that will occur tomorrow."

McCain's top campaign aide, Rick Davis, said Monday's program would be "business only."

"We'll refrain from any political rhetoric that would be traditional in an opening session of a convention," he said.

Other "significant" requirements are that the nominations of McCain for president and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for vice president will take place. But Davis said the campaign has offered to fly Gulf Coast delegates back to the region and that some will be returning with family members. He said Republican financial officials are working with delegations to raise money for charities that operate in the Gulf Coast region.

"We hope and pray conditions in the Gulf don't deteriorate," he said.

The Bush administration received widespread criticism for its response to Hurricane Katrina, which killed more than 1,800 people in Mississippi and Louisiana when it struck on August 29, 2005. Bush himself was criticized for attending political events - including a brief stop to mark McCain's birthday - after the storm left most of New Orleans under water.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, a former Democratic presidential candidate, said the 2005 storm "symbolizes the failure of the Bush administration to respond to a major crisis in our country."

"If there was a lot of confidence that those in authority today would respond to this as they should have, then frankly, I think the convention would go on," Dodd told CNN. "There would be concerns about it, they would be talking about it, but they wouldn't be talking about canceling a convention."

(CNN) - Roberto Ascencio has lived in the New Orleans area for 30 years, 28 of them on the West Bank of the Mississippi River.

He's left the city several times ahead of hurricanes, but this time it's a little more worrisome. His restaurant in Gretna, which opened little more than a year ago after being delayed by 2005's Hurricane Katrina, is on the line.

As the sun set behind him Sunday, Ascencio was driving east on Interstate 10, closing in on Biloxi, Mississippi - 60 miles east of New Orleans - after 16 hours on the road. His wife, daughter, three cats, three dogs and two birds are with him.

"We just took off," he says. "We don't know where we're going right now. It's just crazy."

"Traffic is pretty light," Ascencio told CNN. "But it was bumper-to-bumper for about 10 hours trying to get out.

"It was very light when I left my house," he said. "I thought it was going to be a piece of cake. As soon as we hit the interstate, it was bumper-to-bumper. It was very, very slow-moving."

Ascencio and his family fled New Orleans for Houston, Texas, three years ago, as Katrina bore down on the city. That trip took 18 hours, he says. But the worst part was his restaurant.

"We were just two months away to open up and the whole thing came down," he says. "After Katrina, it took us almost a year and three months to get ready to open again. It was very hard to get back to where we were, because the money was gone. For some people it was even worse, because they had taken out loans."

Ascencio says he took all the precautions he could before he left Louisiana, safeguarding his stocks in the restaurant and moving possessions in his two-story home upstairs. But supplies were in short supply - the local home improvement store was all out of plywood to board up the restaurant windows when he arrived.

"I'm worried because it's my livelihood. My wife runs the restaurant with my sister-in-law. We worked so hard to get there. If it gets destroyed again, I'll probably go bankrupt. I'm just praying that it's going to be OK."

Praying is all he or anyone leaving New Orleans can do at this point. Hurricane Gustav is steaming across the Gulf of Mexico to make a Monday arrival time in the Crescent City, and thousands are streaming out of the way.

"Everybody on my side has Louisiana license plates. It looks like we own the whole highway," Ascencio says, almost laughing. But just as quickly, his voice shifts back to a serious tone.

"I hope everything is well. I'll need to get back and see how things are going, but right now we've just got to keep going."

NEW ORLEANS (CNN) - Louisiana officials urged the remaining residents of the state's coastal parishes to head north ahead of Hurricane Gustav, which was sweeping toward the Gulf Coast with 115-mph winds Sunday afternoon.

Highways north were packed with evacuees from Louisiana and Mississippi, many of them headed to shelters inland. Others with medical conditions were flown out or took trains from New Orleans north - efforts that were stepped up after the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

"It was bumper-to-bumper for about 10 hours trying to get out," said Roberto Ascencio, a restaurant owner in the New Orleans suburb of Gretna. He said he, his wife and daughter packed their pets and whatever else would fit in their car and headed east on Interstate 10 as Gustav neared.

"It was very light when I left my house. I thought it was going to be a piece of cake," he said. "As soon as we hit the interstate, it was bumper-to-bumper. It was very very slow moving."

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation and a curfew and warned against looting. And Gov. Bobby Jindal said that while forecasters can't predict exactly where Gustav will hit, he urged his citizens to "get out of harm's way."

"You still have daylight. You still have hours to evacuate," Jindal said at a Sunday afternoon news conference. "I don't want people in our coastal communities thinking they're going to ride out this storm or that they should ride out this storm."

Meanwhile, three years after his response to Hurricane Katrina received widespread criticism, President Bush canceled plans to attend this week's Republican National Convention as his administration scrambled to prepare for Gustav's arrival. The GOP also curtailed its plans for the convention as the storm neared.

In Mississippi, which took the brunt of Katrina's winds and storm surge three years ago, Gov. Haley Barbour said government agencies were "10 times better prepared" than before - but "that doesn't mean everything is going to go right," he said.

"Anybody who thinks everything is going to go perfect just doesn't know what they're talking about," Barbour said.

At 5 p.m. ET, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center projected the storm would strike land southwest of New Orleans sometime Monday. The Category 3 storm was about 215 miles (350 km) southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River, the National Hurricane Center in Miami reported, and it was moving across the central Gulf of Mexico at 18 mph.

Maps of Gustav's path show that it could strike southern Louisiana and other areas battered by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Katrina, a Category 3 storm, flooded most of New Orleans, flattened beach towns in Mississippi and killed more than 1,800 people.

Gustav already has been blamed for more than 60 deaths in the Caribbean, including 51 in southwestern Haiti. It struck Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Cuba before crossing into the Gulf of Mexico and growing into a major hurricane.

Forecasters warned that Gustav could grow to a Category 4 hurricane before hitting land.

"We are pleading with the public - please do not remain in St. Bernard Parish for this storm," said Craig Taffaro, president of a suburban New Orleans parish devastated by Katrina. "We will do everything we can to open the parish immediately after the storm when conditions are safe to do so."

Nagin said a city-wide curfew would continue until the threat of the storm passes, and he warned that looters would be dealt with harshly.

"Anybody who's caught looting in the city of New Orleans will go directly to Angola," he said, referring to Louisiana's notorious maximum-security prison.

But some, like Louisiana resident Nick Dominque, planned to remain behind. Dominque, 30, told CNN that he had weathered Hurricanes Rita and Katrina and needed to look after his parents in the southern part of the state.

"They think that they can handle any storm that hits, so I'm going to bunker down and stay with them," he said. "I never thought after Rita that I would try to ride out another storm. But here I am again."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who was overseeing evacuation efforts from New Orleans, said most people have chosen to leave, either by car, bus, ambulance or air.

"I was reading in the paper about people who say, 'No I'm going to stay.' I think that's pretty stupid, but I can't stop that from happening," he said. "I'm hoping it's a very small number of people."

Barbour said mandatory evacuations were ordered for two of the three Mississippi coastal counties, while the third has ordered evacuations only from low-lying areas. In Hancock County, along the Mississippi state line, he said forecasters currently predict storm surges of five to eight feet - but if Gustav shifts just 20 miles eastward, "We could see storm surges of 15-20 feet," he said.

Bush warned Gulf Coast residents Sunday that a "serious" storm was headed their way and announced plans to head to Texas to meet with emergency workers and evacuees. Both the president and Vice President Dick Cheney canceled plans to attend the Republican convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, and convention events have been cut back sharply as the storm approached.

"This is a time when we have to do away with our party politics and we have to act as Americans," said Arizona Sen. John McCain, the party's presidential nominee-in-waiting. The party would suspend most of Monday's activities "except for those absolutely necessary," McCain said from St. Louis, Missouri.

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said the convention would have to be called to order and its credentials committee report received so delegates can formally nominate McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

"I would say that the main information I can give you today is that owing to the fact that the senator has asked us to take our Republican hats off and put our American hats on, tomorrow's program will be business only, and we'll refrain from any political rhetoric that would be traditional in an opening session of a convention," Davis said.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The Federal government says disruptions to the fuel supply caused by Hurricane Gustav will likely be "localized and temporary."

he reassurance came in a briefing document provided to reporters Sunday by the U.S. Department of Energy. The document says while Gulf oil fields produce 26 percent of U.S. total crude oil, the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve is filled to record levels and can be released at sufficient volume to make up for any Gustav-related production disruptions.

As of Saturday, the government reports, 96 percent of production in the Gulf region had been halted until the storm passes. Most oil companies have been evacuating workers from oil rigs over the last few days.

Operations at three of the four petroleum reserve sites have been suspended, the DOE said, until the storm passes.

Meanwhile, crude oil prices jumped in a special trading session at the New York Mercantile Exchange, at 5:25 p.m., the price was up $1.61 a barrel.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - The U.S. active-duty military is scrambling to get out of the way of Hurricane Gustav and at the same time be in position to provide assistance.

The Air Force and Navy have moved ships and aircraft out of the immediate region to safer ground. Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississipi, was under orders to evacuate all non-essential personnel by 6 p.m. Sunday, and Fort Polk in Louisiana is expected to follow suit, U.S. military officials said.

Three Navy amphibous warships are getting ready to set sail from Norfolk, Virginia, and the USS Bataan may set sail as soon as late Monday, a Navy spokesman said. The ship can provide food, water, medical supplies and other relief, while the helicopters can conduct search and rescue.

A 10th Mountain Division brigade of about 3,000 active duty Army troops is also on alert to deploy to the region.

The Air Force has spent much of the weekend providing air evacuation from the region. CNN has learned  that as of 7 p.m. Sunday night, the U.S. Air Force will establish a 24/7 crisis action team inside the Pentagon to coordinate Air Force operations.

A Defense Department-wide crisis team is expected to also be established in the Pentagon's underground National Command Center.

All military operations are being coordinated thousands of miles away at the Colorado Springs, Colo., headquarters of the U.S. Northern Command, which is setting up a separate command post in Alexandria, Louisiana.

From CNN's Marsha Walton

NEW ORLEANS (CNN) - The weaknesses remaining in Louisiana's levee system could leave the state open to a worse disaster than 2005's Hurricane Katrina if Hurricane Gustav continues on its present course, a leading researcher said Sunday.

With Gustav forecast to strike the northern Gulf Coast as a major hurricane, Louisiana State University Professor Ivor van Heerden said state and federal officials could have done a lot more to repair damaged levees and restore the coastal wetlands and barrier islands that can blunt the impact of a hurricane.

"If the models are correct, Gustav will destroy what Katrina and Rita did not," van Heerden said. "This is going to be flooding of a much larger area than Katrina."

As deputy director of LSU's Hurricane Center, van Heerden warned of the catastrophic consequences a major hurricane would have on New Orleans long before Katrina struck three years ago. On the eve of its landfall, he told CNN that New Orleans faced "our equivalent of the Asian tsunami." And after the storm flooded more than three-quarters of the city and killed more than 1,800 people in Mississippi and Louisiana, the engineering professor led an investigation into how the levees failed and why.

Sunday, he said authorities could have done more to assess the weak links in the levee system from New Orleans to Morgan City, about 85 miles southwest of the city. He said some of the levees damaged by Katrina remain heaps of bare soil, and that the coastal cypress swamps and barrier islands - which act as speed bumps with an approaching storm - continue to disappear rapidly.

"If the existing barrier islands were a little higher and wider, it could knock two to three feet off the storm surge," he said. "It would have been about a $200 million project. It could have been finished by now."

Coastal authorities in Louisiana did complete some restoration projects, van Heerden said. But he said bureaucratic snags, ranging from a limit on what companies could dredge in the Gulf to the cutting and selling of cypress trees for garden mulch, kept many others from being started.

"For 14 years we've been trying to get the state to start a more large scale effort to rebuild the barrier islands," he said.

Even before it hits, Gustav is likely to disrupt the oil and natural gas industries in the Gulf of Mexico, sending the price of gasoline through the roofand delivering "a huge economic blow" internationally, he said.  But he said the human toll would be greater.

"Who is going to suffer?" he asked. "Not the decision-makers. It is the poor Louisianans."