Ida struck the port at 1655 GMT, packing most sustained winds estimated at 150 miles per hour.
New Orleans:
Hurricane Ida struck the coast of Louisiana Sunday as a robust Class 4 storm, 16 years to the day after lethal Hurricane Katrina devastated the southern US metropolis of New Orleans.
“Extraordinarily harmful Class 4 Hurricane Ida makes landfall close to Port Fourchon, Louisiana,” the Nationwide Hurricane Middle wrote in an advisory.
Ida struck the port, situated roughly 100 miles (160 kilometers) instantly south of New Orleans, at 1655 GMT, packing most sustained winds estimated at 150 miles per hour.
Forward of Ida’s arrival, showers and powerful wind swept New Orleans’ abandoned streets all through the morning, buffeting boarded-up home windows at companies and houses surrounded by sandbags.
State Governor John Bel Edwards stated Ida, which had gathered drive on its strategy via the nice and cozy waters of the Gulf, might be probably the most highly effective storm to hit the state since 1850.
“Hurricane #Ida has made landfall in Louisiana. Discover the most secure place in your own home and keep there till the storm passes,” he wrote on Twitter.
Storm surges had earlier flooded the city of Grand Isle, on a barrier island south of New Orleans, CNN reported.
The Nationwide Hurricane Middle additionally reported excessive water ranges and flooding affecting the communities of Shell Seashore, Louisiana and Yach Membership, Mississippi.
Intensive and long-lasting energy outages are anticipated, with greater than 150,000 properties already with out electrical energy by noon, in keeping with the web site poweroutage.us.
Amid pressing warnings of catastrophic harm, most residents had heeded authorities’ directions to flee. Scores of individuals packed bumper-to-bumper roads main out of New Orleans within the days previous Ida’s arrival.
In a single neighborhood in japanese New Orleans, a number of residents had been nonetheless finishing last-minute preparations simply hours earlier than landfall.
“I am unsure if I am ready,” stated Charles Fields, who was nonetheless bringing his backyard furnishings indoors, “however we simply must trip it.”
The 60-year-old, who in 2005 noticed Hurricane Katrina flood his home with 11 ft (3.3 meters) of water, added that “we’ll see the way it holds up.”
– ‘Very severe take a look at’ –
Governor Edwards warned on Sunday that Ida can be “a really severe take a look at for our levee methods,” an in depth community of pumps, gates and earthen and concrete berms that was expanded after Katrina.
He instructed CNN that a whole lot of hundreds of residents had been believed to have evacuated.
The storm “presents some very difficult difficulties for us, with the hospitals being so filled with Covid sufferers,” he stated.
The Southern state, with a low fee of vaccinations, has been among the many hardest hit by the pandemic, severely stressing hospitals. Hospitalizations, at 2,700 on Saturday, are close to their pandemic excessive.
The reminiscence of Katrina, which made landfall on August 29, 2005, remains to be contemporary in Louisiana, the place it precipitated some 1,800 deaths and billions of {dollars} in harm.
“It is very painful to consider one other highly effective storm like Hurricane Ida making landfall on that anniversary,” Edwards had beforehand stated.
Rainfall of 10 to 18 inches (25 to 46 centimeters) is anticipated in elements of southern Louisiana via Monday, with as much as 24 inches in some areas.
– Ida and the coronavirus –
The White Home stated Sunday that federal businesses had deployed greater than 2,000 emergency staff to the area — together with 13 city search-and-rescue groups — together with meals and water provides and electrical mills.
Native authorities, the Purple Cross and different organizations have ready dozens of shelters with room for not less than 16,000 folks, the White Home added.
Plans to deal with the hurricane — and plans for the shelters — have been difficult by Covid-19.
US President Joe Biden, who has declared a state of emergency for Louisiana, on Saturday urged anybody in neighborhood shelters to put on masks and preserve distance.
Scientists have warned of an increase in cyclone exercise because the ocean floor warms as a result of local weather change, posing an growing menace to the world’s coastal communities.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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