Galveston County emergency officials reiterated Sunday there would be no evacuation ordered, as Hurricane Gustav continued its trek toward central Louisiana.
The 128 coach-style buses staged at Texas City High School for the estimated 5,000 county residents needing assistance leaving will be used elsewhere, said Bruce Clawson, emergency management coordinator for Texas City.
"We'll probably cut them loose Tuesday morning," Clawson said.
Mary Jo Naschke, a spokeswoman for Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas, said there would be no evacuation ordered for the island, but the Emergency Operations Center would remain minimally staffed.
"The staff will continue to monitor the hurricane as it makes it's direct track," Naschke said. "We may be experiencing winds on Tuesday, but we don't even have voluntary evacuations called on the west end for tides."
Clawson said the state would likely send the buses to evacuation centers in the Dallas/Fort Worth and Huntsville areas to return residents who fled Beaumont and Port Arthur.
"With the hurricane predicted to stall in east Texas, there could be significant rain events," Clawson said. "They need to get home and not get caught in rain events."
At 10 a.m., the center of Gustav, a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds at 120 mph, was 325 miles southeast of the Mississippi River and moving northwest at 17 mph.
National Weather Service public advisory listed hurricane warnings from Cameron, La., east to the Alabama-Florida border. A hurricane warning was extended westward to High Island at 4 p.m. Sunday.
