[Howlin]

No. Absolutely NOT.

The voluntary order was Saturday. It might have even been after lunch on Saturday.

And the mandatory was Sunday morning at about 10:30 a.m.

[steveegg]

Timeline as best as I can quickly reconstruct from the earlier Katrina threads (times are CDT) -

• Sometime before 5 pm Friday,, the governor issues a state of emergency for Louisiana
• As of 10:45 pm Friday, New Orleans was simply monitoring the storm.
• At 10 pm Friday, the National Hurricane Center's 3-day track targets New Orleans for a late-afternoon Monday strike. The previous track issued at 4 pm bulls-eyed the Mississippi-Alabama line
• At 10 am Saturday, the NWS issues a hurricane watch for New Orleans.
• By 11:30 am Saturday, evacuations were ordered for parishes to the south and east of New Orleans.
• At 12:22 pm Saturday, Diddle E. Squatt points out that allowing the southern parishes to evacuate first is part of the plan.
• At 4:45 pm Saturday, the voluntary evacuation order for New Orleans is given. At this point, the NWS track shows the eye hitting about 1 pm Monday.
• At 3 am Sunday, the mayor claimed he could not make the evacuation mandatory due to a "legal technicality", and that he would order it if he could.
• At 9:25 am Sunday the evacuation became mandatory.