Millions Evacuate as Hurricane Ivan Nears
illions of people from New Orleans to northwest Florida were urged to flee as Hurricane Ivan pushed across the Gulf of Mexico on a track that could bring it to the U.S. coast on Wednesday night or early Thursday, news services reported.
Ivan was forecast to roar ashore on or near the border between Mississippi and Alabama. The nearest cities include Biloxi and Pascagoula, Miss., and Mobile, Ala.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that Ivan could affect more than 6.1 million people.
More than 1.2 million people were told to evacuate New Orleans, which sits below sea level near the mouth of the Mississippi River. The city's Louis Armstrong Airport was ordered closed Tuesday night.
On Interstate 65 in Alabama, officials turned the highway into a northbound-only evacuation route Wednesday morning, Reuters said. And although there was heavy traffic, no other major problems were reported on Mississippi's U.S. 49, the four-lane route from the coast.
Meanwhile, several oil companies already have removed thousands of workers from offshore platforms and shut down some refineries and rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, Reuters reported.
Ivan had weakened slightly as it moved north, but was still a dangerous Category 4 storm on the five-step hurricane intensity scale, the National Hurricane Center said.
Its top sustained winds were down from a peak of 165 mph on Saturday, when it was declared the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane on record.
