New Orleans begins evacuation as Gustav gains strength

Tropical Storm Gustav has regained hurricane strength as it churned toward Cuba, leaving 78 people dead in its wake, as New Orleans began voluntary evacuations ahead of the storm's projected arrival next week.

Jamaica awoke to a trail of devastation and reports that the storm killed as many as 11 people on the mountainous island, as people on the US Gulf Coast hurried storm preparations, exactly three years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the region.

The National Hurricane Centre (NHC) said in a special bulletin that Gustav had regained hurricane force.

"Data from an Air Force reconnaissance aircraft indicate that Gustav has again become a hurricane, with maximum winds near 120 kilometres per hour," the Centre said.

The system ripped through the Dominican Republic and Haiti earlier this week, then thrashed Jamaica, beginning its rampage as a Category One hurricane on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale before weakening to a tropical storm.

Streets in the normally bustling capital city of Kingston were soaked and quiet, except for howling winds as Gustav's powerful gusts sent metal roofs flying, and threatened to wreak havoc on Jamaica's banana industry, officials said.

A few people in raincoats and boots tried to help motorists get stranded cars freed, as hundreds crowded into shelters.

"On this track the centre of Gustav will pass near or over the Cayman Islands later Friday, over the western portions of Cuba on Saturday and into the southern Gulf of Mexico on Sunday," the Hurricane Centre said.

With more than 11 million people, Cuba is extremely vulnerable to hurricanes, with most of its housing stock aged and in fragile condition.

Over 2 million people live in the capital, Havana, where many colonial era buildings, crowded with families, are prone to cave-in after heavy rains.

Authorities in Cuba, the Americas' only communist country, are famed for well organised evacuation operations but acknowledge the dangers precarious homes pose.

Anxiety also was mounting on the hurricane-ravaged US Gulf Coast on the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Authorities in New Orleans began bussing out residents on a voluntary basis, and considered ordering mandatory evacuations to prevent a repeat of the devastation and deaths of 2005.

Louisiana and Mississippi have already declared states of emergency before Gustav's expected landfall late Monday, when it could strike as a major storm of Category Three of higher.

Katrina killed some 1,800 on the US Gulf Coast, most of them in New Orleans.

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