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The entire 7,000-strong Louisiana National Guard and 16,000 reservists from neighbouring states has been mobilised to prevent looting in the Big Easy. The Red Cross has deployed 3,000 of the 40,000 volunteers known as "Katrina babes", recruited after the 2005 hurricane.

The hurricane has also prompted oil refineries along the Gulf of Mexico to shut down, sending the price of oil teetering nervously upward before falling back, and compelled the Republican party to scale back its national convention, which is due to open today in the state of Minnesota.

The huge influx of government officials, soldiers and Red Cross helpers provided a stark contrast to the lax and confused reaction to the disaster three years ago.

President Bush, who was heavily criticised for failing to cut short his holiday when Katrina struck in 2005 and for then praising the muddled and inadequate disaster effort, is seeking to make amends this time by visiting emergency response centres in Texas today, where many of the Gulf Coast evacuees have been put up in hotels and temporary accommodation.

Yesterday's mass-evacuation took place after an order issued by Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, who said: "You need to be scared, you need to be concerned, and you need to get your butts moving out of New Orleans right now. This is the storm of the century.

"This storm is so powerful — and growing more powerful — that I'm not sure we've seen anything like it."

As families streamed out of the city, all roads were turned into one-way routes to help to ease a huge backlog of traffic. Families packed pets and possessions into their cars and joined the queue heading for shelter inland or farther along the coast in Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

The scale of the preparations and the relatively smooth execution of emergency plans contrasted with the chaos of the Katrina disaster, during which evacuation orders were issued too late and tens of thousands of people were left stranded in a flooded city.

Those without the means to leave town yesterday were directed to up to 17 pick-up points to await transport provided by city and state authorities. Up to 16,000 people were being airlifted to other cities on charter flights paid for by the federal government; others were put on trains and buses.

As New Orleans this morning began to resemble a ghost-town, humanitarian efforts were well under way to accommodate those who had left the city.

Consuelo Stacy, a retired IBM office-worker from Maine, returned to the Baton Rouge area, about 65 miles inland from New Orleans, to set up a shelter in the same town where she volunteered in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

"I am excited because I feel I know the community. We will be more effective because we know the area," she said. "The main challenge is getting all these total strangers — volunteers — to be cohesive well-oiled machine overnight."

Mike Edmonson, the Louisiana state police superintendant, praised the co-ordination of government evacuation efforts. "Those things we were doing in a matter of minutes and hours took days after Katrina," he said.

Officials said that 95 per cent of the population of New Orleans had left the city, including prisoners and pets. With some 200,000 gone, an estimated 10,000 remained behind.

"I've got liquor, cash, food, ammo and weed," said Hattie Callan, 36, as she weaved down the street in the city's French Quarter with a glass of vodka in her hand at 9.20am yesterday morning. She was staying to keep an eye on several properties.

John Lyons, the skipper of an oil rig crew boat named the Captain Rayne, planned to ride out the storm afloat, along with 16 adults, six young children and several dogs. "I'm a survivor, I'm a pirate. I feel safer on this boat than I do in that house. I've been doing this all my life," he said.

Governor Bobby Jindal said that Louisiana found 29,000 beds for evacuees in seven nearby states. Another 25,000 beds were provided at 123 shelters set up in Louisiana itself. Three elderly patients died as hospitals evacuated patients along the Gulf coast.

The local Times-Picayune newspaper ran a banner headline across its front page that summed up the mood: "Hunkering Down." Mr Nagin, who was criticised during Hurricane Katrina, vowed to sleep on a camp bed at City Hall in New Orleans to co-ordinate relief and evacuation efforts.

Michael Chertoff, the Secretary for Homeland Security, said that Katrina had been a "real inspiration" for government officials to plan for future hurricanes. Federal and state officials had been working on an emergency plan for three years.

"If you have a good plan, you are still going to have problems, but at least you have a good basis," he said. "If you are walking into a problem and you have two days to put together a plan, you are stuck."

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