MOBILE, United States (AFP) - Residents of the US Gulf Coast braced for the full fury of Hurricane Ivan, which triggered a major exodus from several states after killing 70 people across the Caribbean.
In Mobile, Alabama, where the storm is expected to make landfall, the few residents who had not yet left town were either heading to safety or hunkering down in their boarded-up homes.
"It`s been 25 years since we had such a huge hurricane. It was long overdue. I`m afraid this is going to be the one," said retiree Rhonda Preston, as she left the city with her husband, dog, six cats and all of their valuables.
The couple said they had taken all of their belongings except the furniture from the mobile home where they live, which Preston said "we expect to lose."
The first bands of wind were expected to slam into western Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana Wednesday morning, while the ferocious eyewall was likely to crash ashore before dawn on Thursday.
"You don`t want to be here when it hits the shores," said Alabama Governor Bob Riley, urging people who had not yet evacuated homes in coastal areas to do so immediately.
Among the cities affected by the evacuation was New Orleans, Louisiana, with a metropolitan-area population of 1.2 million.
In some areas, police drove door to door to ask those still at home to seek shelter on higher ground as Ivan neared the coast to become the third hurricane in a month to slam into southern US states, after Charley and Frances battered Florida.
"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 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."
About 32 shelters have been opened statewide, the spokesman added.
The Coast Guard closed seven ports in four states covering a stretch of coast from Panama City in Florida to New Orleans in Louisiana, a spokesman said.
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.
At 1500 GMT, the center of Ivan was located about 380 kilometers (235 miles) south of Mobile, Alabama, on a track moving toward the north near 21 kilometers (13 miles) per hour and this motion is expected to continue over the next 24 hours, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.
"The center of Ivan is expected to reach the coast during the very early morning hours on Thursday," it warned.
Ivan "continues as an extremely dangerous category four hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane intensity scale, with maximum sustained winds near 135 mph (217 kph)," it added.
Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi were under a state of emergency, houses and businesses close to the coast were boarded up and military bases sent personnel, ships and planes to safety.
Before heading into the Gulf of Mexico, Ivan had rampaged across the Caribbean, from Grenada to Cuba.
Hundreds of homes and fishing and farm installations in western Cuba were damaged Monday as roofs were torn off, trees were felled and mudslides cut off some communities.
In the Cayman Islands, which were hit Sunday, dozens of people had not been accounted for, and the British territory remained under a state of emergency.
Grenada was the worst hit by Ivan, with at least 37 people killed last week and up to 90 percent of all buildings damaged or destroyed, officials said.
In Jamaica, police put the death toll at 21 after powerful winds and heavy rain from Ivan tore down houses, felled trees and destroyed roads in the nation of 2.7 million.
The hurricane was also blamed for five deaths in Venezuela, four in the Dominican Republic, three in Haiti and one in Tobago.
Aid for the devastated nations started pouring in, with the European Commission announcing it was sending 1.5 million euros (1.8 million dollars) and Canada pledging 500,000 Canadian dollars (385,000 US dollars).
Caribbean leaders were to hammer out a regional disaster plan for Grenada and Jamaica at an emergency meeting Wednesday in Trinidad.
But as the assistance was on its way, weary Caribbean residents cast a wary eye at Tropical Storm Jeanne, which was gaining strength as it headed for the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico, and was expected to become a hurricane sometime Wednesday.