New Orleans: Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana’s coast on Sunday as a powerful 4-year-old 4-year-old storm until the deadly, Hurricane Katrina devastated the South New Orleans city.
“The extremely dangerous category 4 Hurricane Ida makes Landfall close to Port Fourchon, Louisiana,” he wrote the National Hurricane Center on a notice.
Ida hit the port, located approximately 100 miles (160 kilometers) directly south of New Orleans, at 1655 GMT, packed the maximum sustained winds estimated at 150 miles per hour.
Before the arrival of Ida, the rains and the strong wind swept the deserted streets of New Orleans during the morning, the windows addressed by buffeting in the companies and the homes surrounded by bags of sand.
The state governor, John Bel Edwards, said Ida, who had gathered the force on his approach through the warm waters of the Gulf, could be the most powerful storm to reach the state since 1850.
“Hurricane #ida has done land in Louisiana, find the safest place in your house and stay there until the storm passes,” he wrote on Twitter.
The surge of storm had previously flooded the city of Grand Isle, on a barrier island south of New Orleans, CNN reported.
The National Hurricane Center also reported high levels of water and floods that affect the communities of Shell Beach, Louisiana and Yach Club, Mississippi.
Extensive and lasting energy cuts are expected, with more than 150,000 homes already without electricity by means of noon, according to the Powerutage.us website.
In the midst of urgent warnings of catastrophic damage, most residents had presented attention to the instructions of the authorities to flee. People’s scores packed bumper roads at bumper that leave New Orleans on days prior to the arrival of Ida.
In a neighborhood in East New Orleans, some residents were still completing last-minute preparations, only hours before landlord.
“I’m not sure if I’m ready,” said Charles Fields, who was still carrying his garden furniture inside, “but we just have to rink it.”
The 60-year-old boy, who in 2005 saw Hurricane Katrina flood his house with 11 feet (3.3 meters) of water, added that “we will see how it stops.”
Governor Edwards warned on Sunday that Ida would be “a very serious test for our dyke systems”, an extensive network of pumps, doors and concrete berms that expanded after Katrina.
He told CNN that it was believed that hundreds of thousands of residents had evacuated.
The storm “presents some very challenging difficulties for us, and hospitals are so full of Covid patients,” he said.
The southern state, with a low vaccine rate, has been among those most affected by the pandemic, severely stressful hospitals. Hospitalizations, at 2,700 on Saturday, are close to their high pandemic.
The memory of Katrina, who carried out land on August 29, 2005, is still fresh in Louisiana, where it caused some 1,800 death and billions of dollars.
“It is very painful to think of another powerful storm like hurricane Ida doing landing on that anniversary,” Edwards said before.
It is expected from rain from 10 to 18 inches (25 to 46 centimeters) in parts of the south of Louisiana until Monday, with up to 24 inches in some areas.
The White House said Sunday that federal agencies had deployed more than 2,000 emergency workers to the region, including 13 urban search and rescue teams, along with food supplies and electrical food and generators.
Local authorities, the Red Cross and other organizations have prepared dozens of shelters with space for at least 16,000 people, added the White House.
Plans to deal with Hurricane, and plans for shelters, have been complicated by Covid-19.
US President Joe Biden, who has declared an emergency state for Louisiana, on Saturdays urged anyone in community shelters to use masks and maintain distance.
Scientists have warned an increase in cyclone activity, since the surface of the ocean is heated due to climate change, posing a growing threat to the coastal communities of the world.
