Southern Louisiana gets ready for Gustav

It looks like Hurricane Gustav is going to make landfall right between where Katrine and Rita came ashore three years ago. Some mandatory evacuations will be called for later today, with St. Bernard Parish getting a mandatory evacuation later today and the threat arrest for violators of the curfew that will be implemented.

WWL-TV is running a special morning newscast this morning that is being streamed over the ‘net. Linux users can load this URI into VLC or your favorite streaming media player: http://www.wwltv.com/sharedcontent/video/makeASX.php?title=beloint_wwltv&live=1. That URI may change so visit the WWL home page to get updated links as needed. Open the link to the video page in Firefox and then select Tools > Page Info, then use the Media tab and look for the embedded media. The Links and Forms extension will be needed to get the Media tab for Firefox 3’s Page Info window. You can also look at the page source for the URI to paste into your media player.

If you have family and friends in southern Louisiana please encourage them to get out of the area, not waiting for the Contraflow to be opened or even for the evacuation for their area to be ordered. Gustav is already a Category 3 hurricane and is nothing to play around with, and there will be a lot of people getting out of the area. Beat the traffic by leaving now. I just saw on WWL that the Union Passenger Terminal in New Orleans already has people in line around the block so you do not want to wait if you can at all avoid it.

Updated 9:00a: Google Earth Blog is reporting that there is a single networking link you can use to follow the path of Gustav in Google Earth.