US:The home of jazz has fallen silent as it awaits an unwelcome visitor in the shapes of hurricane Gustav, writes David Smithin New Orleans.
STRIPPED TO his shorts and flexing his arm tattoos, William LeBlanc sat on his front steps and chewed a cigarette in the sticky Louisiana heat. "I've nowhere to go and no way to get there," he said with a loner's defiance. "Go to a shelter and get stabbed and cut and go hungry? I'll take my chances." LeBlanc was alone in the suffocating quiet of New Orleans' impoverished 9th Ward, where three years ago Hurricane Katrina left bodies floating in the streets. Yesterday, there were no people, no animals, no traffic, no semblance of everyday life; only traffic lights blinking unseen from red to green.
But LeBlanc, an army veteran, was determined to ignore the mayor's mandatory order to evacuate because Hurricane Gustav, the "storm of the century", was moving closer.
"Everything I own is in this house and I ain't giving them up," he said. "I'm a carpenter and I have no way of getting my tools out. If I lose them, I can't make a living. I have to protect them.
"I was in Indiana the day Katrina hit and I got back to devastation. It was sick. I cleaned shit up off the streets for months. And I saw a few dead bodies. It was f***ing nasty. It hurt the heart every day."
This time LeBlanc knows he is taking his life in his hands. "I don't want to sleep elbow to elbow with 40,000 people; I like being by myself," he said. "My phone is dead, so I can't call for help. I say my prayers every day."
Travelling through the 7th, 8th and 9th wards there was the same sense of a ghost town, with only a few stragglers boarding up windows and packing up to leave.
This time people were not taking any chances. Those too poor to own a car had been given state transport, and a calm procession of white buses could be seen taking them to safety.
They joined a stream of outbound traffic, while inbound lanes were virtually dead.
On corners of streets with names such as Piety and Desire there were glimpses of National Guard soldiers and police in uniforms, adding to the sense of a city under siege. A black family with luggage slung over their shoulders could be seen crossing one of the cracked roads on their way to a bus pick-up point.
Eerie quiet: The home of jazz had fallen silent. Even in the main tourist district, the French Quarter, was eerily subdued. Bars, hotels and souvenir shops had locked their doors, some with lights still on or music playing with no one to hear.
Although the district is on high ground and escaped flooding last time, a few buildings had panels of wood hammered over the doors. One stood out with bright pink sprayed letters: "Don't even think about it Gustav."
Just off Bourbon Street, St Louis Cathedral was open and candles burned, but there was not a soul to be seen.
Most of the activity outside came from US TV journalists, although a few residents still lingered like survivors of an unexplained calamity. -(Guardian service)