Preparations for Hurricane Katrina
At a news conference 10:00 AM on August 28, shortly after Katrina was upgraded to a Category 5 storm, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin ordered the first ever mandatory evacuation of the city, calling Katrina, "a storm that most of us have long feared". To speed up the evacuations, authorities used contraflow lane reversal on Interstate 10 leading west of New Orleans, as well as on Interstate 55 and Interstate 59 leading north from the city. The city government also established several "refuges of last resort" for citizens who could not leave the city, including the massive Louisiana Superdome, which housed approximately 26,000 people with food and water for several days as the storm came ashore. The Louisiana National Guard delivered three truckloads of water and seven truckloads of MRE's to the Superdome, enough to supply 15,000 people for three days.