When Pamela Pipes fled New Orleans for Houston at the weekend with her dog and vital papers, she contrasted the orderly lines of people boarding trains and buses out of the city with the chaos of Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

Then, many ignored government calls to leave and were stranded on rooftops or died trapped in attics as 10 feet of water flooded the city. Ms Pipes said it appeared the authorities “did get the wake-up call”: Gustav was still thousands of miles from the US Gulf coast when Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal held his first news conference about the approaching storm last Thursday.