City better prepared, Nagin says

NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans is better prepared for the upcoming hurricane season because of stronger flood walls and better evacuation plans since Hurricane Katrina, Mayor Ray Nagin said in an interview Tuesday.

"We should be able to sustain another Katrina," the mayor said.

"If a Category 5 hits us, probably the city will be gone, and the levees will still be standing. The work they're doing is just incredible," Nagin said of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The Corps, which designed and built the city's levees, has been heavily criticized by residents who note the city survived the worst of the Aug. 29 storm but then was swamped when flood walls broke, inundating 80 percent of the city with brackish water. Many have expressed fear about the condition of the levees as the June 1 start of hurricane season approaches.

But Nagin told The Associated Press he's confident the Corps is using better materials and designs on the levees.

He also said that evacuating the city in the event of another hurricane should be smoother. He said he would be in closer contact with forecasters at the National Hurricane Center so he'll know quickly whether a mandatory evacuation will be needed. The one ordered two days before Katrina hit was the city's first.

Nagin said he is concerned about the large number of travel trailers in which people are living while they repair their homes. Because the trailers are not very secure in high wind, they may need to be evacuated faster than the rest of the city.

"They could turn into little missiles," Nagin said.

But he predicted residents would be more likely to comply with evacuation orders now. In the future, he said, they will be bused away from the city rather than to shelters like the Superdome, where residents were stranded in hot, dank conditions for days after Katrina hit in late August.

"People are pretty attuned to leaving if I say you have to leave, so I don't see that as being as much of a challenge," he said.

Nagin is up for re-election April 22 and facing a slate of two dozen candidates, including Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu.

The mayor said he believes the city can be mostly restored in the next five years.