08/29/2021 2:57 PM
Clarín.com
World
Updated 08/29/2021 3:07 PM
With the streets deserted and businesses closed, a ghostly New Orleans holds its breath for Hurricane Ida, remembering the nightmare of Katrina, which devastated the city in 2005. It has already made landfall in Louisiana and they warn that it
"can be devastating" with its 240 km per hour
.
Thousands of people fled the city and the Louisiana coast to take refuge from
the fury of the "monster"
that, with its torrential rains and winds of more than 150 miles per hour, threatens to be devastating.
The hurricane flirts with
category 5
, the highest and the scariest.
There are only five hurricanes of this force that hit the United States so far: Michael, in 2018;
Andrew, in 1992;
Camille in 1969 and the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935.
New Orleans and Louisiana have been preparing for days
but Covid-19 complicates the organization.
Hospitals are full and there was no possibility of relocating patients.
Lake Pontchartrain, near New Orleans.
AP Photo
Established public shelters operate
with limited capacity
to ensure social distancing and reduce the risk of exposure to the virus in a state that has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country.
Ida comes
across
as the most serious
and difficult test for the levee system established in Louisiana since Katrina that, on August 29, 2005, exactly 16 years ago, struck the state and devastated New Orleans.
Maximum alert
The toll was more than 1,800 deaths
and billions of dollars in damages.
Today the city appears to be better equipped for flooding, but the fury of the hurricane remains terrifying.
Four thousand men of the National Guard
are on high alert
, the American civil defense is ready with power generators, food and water.
"If you were not evacuated,
now is the time to seek refuge,
" was the joint invitation of the governor of Louisiana and the mayor of New Orleans.
Floods near New Orleans.
AP Photo
The city's airport is completely closed, forcing many tourists into a forced stay after having ignored invitations to leave.
There are already 65,000 people without electricity
and there are curfews in several small coastal towns.
Ida's enormous strength has already
forced 91% of oil rigs
in the Gulf of Mexico
to shut down
, suggesting an increase in oil prices.
And the debate about the effects of climate change is rekindled, at the origin - according to many - of the power of the hurricane.
The temperature of the Gulf waters, already normally warm for the period, in fact
increased in recent decades
due to greenhouse gas emissions, making the intensification of the strength of hurricanes more rapid and frequent.
Ida, for example, switched to category 4 just one hour after arriving at 3.
At the Dover military base, where he received the bodies of 13 fallen Marines in Afghanistan, US President Joe Biden
follows events by maintaining constant communication
with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The president has
already declared a state of emergency
for Louisiana and Mississippi, paving the way for federal assistance.
Biden did not hide in the last hours
his concern about the hurricane
, also aware of the memory of the debacle with Katrina of George W. Bush, the president who started the war in Afghanistan, which he tries to end after 20 years.
Speed
Ida is traveling
at 13 miles per hour (20 km / h)
and it is in a northwest direction, which would take the center of the hurricane to pass in the next few hours above or very close to the city of Baton Rouge, capital and second city most populous in the state, behind New Orleans, with about 220,000 inhabitants.
In Gulfport, Mississippi, streets flooded.
AP Photo
In addition to the powerful winds, capable of destroying the houses in the eye of the hurricane, the authorities are especially concerned
about the floods
that can leave the combination of the rise in sea level caused by the storm surge, the strong waves and the expected heavy rains.
It was water
that precisely caused the vast majority of deaths in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans on August 29, breaking down the containment levees that protected the city from nearby Lake Pontchartrain.
The governor of Louisiana, John Bel Edwards, acknowledged this Sunday in an interview with CNN that Ida
will be a "very serious test"
for the levee systems, in which millionaire investments have been registered since 2005.
In the case of Ida, meteorologists anticipate an accumulation of rain of up to 24 inches (60 centimeters) and
a rise in sea level of up to 16 feet (4.8 meters).
After crossing the state of Louisiana from south to north,
Ida would enter Mississippi
already converted into a tropical storm and winds of about 60 miles per hour (100 km / h).
Source: ANSA, EFE and AFP
PB
Look also
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