Residents batten down hatches for Ivan

Apprehensive coastal residents from Florida’s Panhandle to Louisiana started boarding up windows, packing and hitting the road today as powerful Hurricane Ivan headed for the Gulf Coast after ploughing across Cuba.

A hurricane watch was posted for a 420-mile-long swathe from St Marks in the Florida Panhandle, just south of Tallahassee, to New Orleans and Morgan City, Louisiana.

Five Florida counties urged or ordered residents to leave their homes today as did New Orleans.

Ivan, packing 155 mph winds, is expected to reach landfall on Thursday and crossing the Gulf of Mexico and its offshore oil rigs.

The hint of disaster was enough to put up oil prices by $1 in early New York trading today.

Oil and gas rigs in the Gulf were evacuated and hundreds of people abandoned fishing settlements on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula.

And, in further bad news for residents, a tropical depression grew into Tropical Storm Jeanne today, posing a threat to the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, and could grow into a hurricane by Saturday.

The five-day forecast track, subject to wide margins of error, had it rolling through the eastern Bahamas this weekend and pointed in the general direction of North Florida’s East Coast, but the storm was predicted to move very slowly and many things can happen.

Ivan, which cut a deadly swathe across Grenada, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands and Cuba, was a strong Category 4 hurricane with top sustained wind of 155 mph, although meteorologists said it might lose some strength before hitting the Gulf Coast.

The storm, one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to hit the Caribbean, has so far been blamed for at least 68 deaths. It swept past Cuba’s western tip on Monday night, drenching farm fields while sending 20-foot waves toward shore.

“That’s a monster they’ve got out there. I’m not taking any chances,” Irvin Bruce said as he and his wife, Lillian, packed to leave the Copa Casino in Gulfport, Mississippi, to return to their home west of New Orleans. If necessary, he said, they would keep going west.

Florida Panhandle residents needed no more reminders of the perils of powerful hurricanes. Hurricanes Charley and Frances caused billions in damage and were blamed for more than 50 deaths state-wide Ivan could make landfall as the triumvirate’s most powerful.

Millions of residents along the coast were advised to, at the very least, begin paying close attention to Ivan.

Schools were closed throughout the New Orleans region, which has about 1.6 million residents, and commercial traffic was almost non-existent today as long queues formed at petrol pumps and traffic began building on routes out of the area.

All over low-lying southern Louisiana, residents made plans to leave.