WASHINGTON, Sept 15 (AFP) - Residents of New Orleans were preparing Wednesday for the possibility powerful Hurricane Ivan could hit their flood-prone hometown, boarding up and driving out by the thousands, authorities said.
"People are still evacuating. The roads are still quite clogged," Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness office spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Pete Schneider told AFP.
Schneider said that a few parishes (county-sized jurisdictions) had mandatory evacuation orders, but that New Orleans -- with about 1.2 million in the metropolitan area, had a recommended evacuation alert.
Though forecasts put Ivan's track for landfall to the east of Louisiana in Alabama, he said, most residents who could were heading out just in case. And local roads and highways were crammed.
"Louisiana is recognized as being a leader in emergency preparations but when you try to evacuate so many, the infrastructure can only take so much."
"We continue evacuations," Schneider said. "And the Governor (Kathleen Blanco) has brought on more national guardsmen to help with traffic."
About 32 shelters have been opened statewide, the spokesman added.
The deadly storm was expected to make landfall near Mobile, Alabama, but with powerful winds spreading out some 420 kilometers (260 miles) from its eye, it will impact a large swath of land.
Numerous flights to the area were cancelled and ports, including New Orleans, were closed.
New Orleans emergency manager Walter Maestri told The Washington Post the city had 10,000 body bags ready in case anything greater than a category three hurricane -- the maximum the city's levees are designed to withstand -- should strike.
Officials recalled that Hurricane Betsy had killed 110 people and left the city under more than two meters (seven feet) of water in 1965.