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New Orleans: The authorities expect huge destruction
Photo: Eric Gay / AP
The extremely dangerous Hurricane »Ida« is approaching the US Gulf Coast with destructive force.
The authorities in the state of Louisiana are warning of severe damage and flooding.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) warned that the state and the city of New Orleans would face heavy rain, a "life-threatening storm surge," catastrophic gusts of wind and long-lasting power outages.
Governor John Bel Edwards activated the National Guard with up to 5,000 soldiers.
"Ida" will be one of the strongest storms since 1850 when it hits Louisiana, he said.
He also urged everyone to get to safety before the storm arrived.
But many of the weakest will not succeed: The coastal hospitals in Louisiana cannot be evacuated because there are too many corona patients in the state.
There are currently 2,450 inpatients in the state for Covid-19 disease, Governor Edwards told CNN on Saturday.
There is no longer any capacity in Louisiana and the neighboring states to accept additional patients.
"Evacuating hospitals will therefore not be possible," he said.
Louisiana and the neighboring states are in the midst of a dramatic corona wave. Edwards said long-term blackouts from the hurricane were a major threat to medical facilities, despite generators. The state has already mobilized 10,000 workers to restore the power supply, and another 20,000 from other parts of the country could still be requested. "We're going to have to get the power back as soon as possible, that's one of my biggest worries," Edwards said.
According to the NHC weather service, "Ida", a particularly high category 4 hurricane, should hit land in Louisiana on Sunday - almost 16 years to the day after the devastation caused by Hurricane "Katrina".
The service classified "Ida" as "extremely dangerous".
On parts of the Louisiana coast, west of New Orleans, a life-threatening storm surge of up to 4.5 meters is to be expected.
"The time to act is NOW," said the agency on Twitter.
Category 4 is the second highest of the hurricane scale going up to level 5, it means wind speeds of at least 209 kilometers per hour.
According to the NHC, New Orleans is also threatened, where more than 1,800 people were killed in 2005 by "Katrina" and 80 percent of the city was flooded. It is not possible to evacuate everyone in the city, the streets are not designed for that, said Mayor LaToya Cantrell. Many petrol stations were running out of gas, while long queues formed at others. Long traffic jams also formed on the motorways.
Because of the rapidly approaching storm, there was no time to order an evacuation of the entire city, Cantrell said.
She therefore only ordered the evacuation of particularly endangered areas that lie outside the dams.
In addition to direct storm damage, the jazz metropolis also fears flooding from heavy rain and storm surges.
New Orleans is almost entirely surrounded by water - Lake Pontchartrain to the north, Lake Borgne to the east, and the wetlands along the Mississippi Estuary to the south.
Threatened ports, a nuclear power plant, overcrowded clinics
Cantrell called on New Orleans residents within the protection system to stay in their homes.
"We don't want people to take to the streets and put themselves in greater danger," she told the news portal nola.com.
In addition, public shelters would be set up.
Apparently, large industrial regions lie in a corridor from New Orleans to Baton Rouge on the predicted path of the storm.
Weather expert Jeff Masters said it would go through "the absolutely worst place for a hurricane to come."
Many facilities in the oil industry, three ports and a nuclear power station could be affected.
According to the Reuters news agency, a large refinery has already temporarily ceased operations.
US President Joe Biden received a briefing from the Fema civil protection agency about the storm on Saturday.
Fema has already brought 500 emergency services as well as 1.6 million liters of drinking water, a million meals and generators to the region, the White House said.
The coast guard brought 18 helicopters and numerous boats into position for rescue operations.
"Ida" was supposed to weaken overland and move northeast to Mississippi and Tennessee on Monday.
Meanwhile, in the Pacific, Hurricane “Nora” struck land in Mexico, causing flooding and damage.
With wind speeds of up to 140 kilometers per hour, it moved over the coast of the state of Jalisco.
Some communities had previously been evacuated.
The NHC predicted heavy rain for more than 1,500 kilometers of Mexico's west coast and the Baja California peninsula.
This will likely cause life-threatening flash floods and landslides.
According to the forecast, “Nora” should continue to move north parallel to the coast across the Gulf of California in the coming days, initially as a level one hurricane.
Just last week, the tropical storm "Henri" caused power outages and floods in the northeastern United States.
According to the knowledge of an overwhelming majority of scientists, climate change leads to rising temperatures of the sea surface and thus to stronger cyclones, which pose an increasing threat, especially for coastal locations worldwide.
mxw / dpa / Reuters