Katrina lost power, Gustav may gain before landfall

Sky's David Bowden, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, said: "The difference here is that, at it's peak, when it was in the Gulf, Katrina was up to Category 5 - the top scale, as was (Hurricane) Rita, the one that followed it three weeks later.

"(Gustav) has always been around 3 or 4 and once it really does hit land, it will start losing power as it moves into buildings and trees and the rugged landscape.

"It will lose power but we are still talking about wind speeds in excess of 100mph, we're still talking about several inches of rain and we're still talking about somewhere that was drenched three years ago and the levies still have not been properly repaired." - Skynews

clipped from news.sky.com Nearly two million people have fled the path of Hurricane Gustav, as the killer storm approaches the coast of Louisiana in the US. More than 1,800 people died along the US Gulf Coast in 2005, most of them in New Orleans, Louisiana, where thousands were stranded for days without food or sanitation.