where will Gustav go and when

It appears that hurricane preparedness in New Orleans has vastly improved since Katrina.  Louisiana has contracted 700 tourist-type buses; so at 50 per bus (max), that's 35,000 people potentially being evacuated.  Maybe that will be enough.  If it isn't, well Plan B.  Not sure there is one.  St. Bernard Parish will be sending stay-behinds to Angola Prison after today if they are caught leaving their homes.  I imagine New Orleans will do likewise.  Gustav has slowed up, now making landfall Tuesday instead of Monday.  Question is, is it better to leave Saturday and take a 6 hour drive north for shelter or wait for the contraflow jam up with last-minute evacuees?   I met a guy in Rite Aid this morning where I went to buy ice.  He's going to San Antonio; news is that I-10 west is jammed with people with that idea.  The storm's predicted landfall site has been inching further west for days now.  I didn't question his judgment...anyway, what is good judgment at this point?  Until Katrina, few people did anything before a storm entered the Gulf of Mexico.  People evacuating north, like me, will be hit with the aftermath of Gustav as it bends east into Mississippi. 

For people asking why people live in New Orleans with this annual threat, I ask...what do we all pay for battling annual wild fires in California on a per person-in-danger basis, or for recovery from tornadoes in Oklahoma, Kansas, and other plains states?  I will agree that whatever is built to replace what is destroyed in a disaster should be constructed for the conditions just experienced, whether that is flooding, high winds, fire-damage, or earthquake shaking.  Maybe we will see just how better prepared New Orleans is, although it was estimated that the Corps of Engineers needed three more years to give us the levees we thought we had three years ago. 

Why Louisiana allows so much wealth to pass through our fingers and into the federal treasury from oil and gas revenues instead of restoring our coastline is incomprehensible.  Maybe there is an unwritten rule of graft and corruption between energy corporations and Louisiana politicians....companies get a break, politicians get the cash?  Enough rambling, it's time to decide when to evacuate. 

It's a good opportunity now to justify bending my diet on a road trip.