The storm will change the lives of the unprepared, meteorologists warned. A mass evacuation of New Orleans is no longer possible
Hurricane Ida struck Cuba on Friday and threatened to strike the US state of Louisiana with devastating force over the weekend, the Associated Press reported.
Ida quickly escalated on Friday from a tropical storm into a hurricane with a wind speed of 128 km / h as it crossed western Cuba and entered the Gulf of Mexico. The US National Hurricane Center (NCU) predicts that Ida will intensify to an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane with a wind speed of 225 km / h when it reaches the US coast late Sunday.
Ida is expected to reach land on the same date that Hurricane Katrina swept much of the coast 16 years ago, the AP reported.
“It will be a storm that will change the lives of the unprepared,” meteorologist Benjamin Shot told a joint news conference Friday with Louisiana Gov. John Bell Edwards.
The governor urged residents to prepare quickly, saying, “You must be where you plan to survive the storm by tomorrow night.”
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell has ordered a mandatory evacuation for a small area of the city outside the system of protective dikes. But with the storm escalating in such a short period of time, she said it would not be possible to evacuate the entire city.
“The city can’t order a mandatory evacuation because we don’t have time,” Cantrell said.
City officials said residents should prepare for long periods without electricity and asked the elderly to consider evacuation. According to the city’s director of emergency management, Colin Arnold, the city will be exposed to strong winds for about 10 hours.
Mandatory or voluntary evacuation orders have been issued in other areas of the coast.
Ida reached land for the first time on Friday afternoon on the southern Cuban island of Juventud (Mladost). The Cuban government has issued a hurricane warning for its westernmost provinces, where forecasters say up to 50cm of rain could fall in some places, which could cause deadly floods and landslides.
Colonel Noel Lozano of the Cuban Civil Defense said more than 10,000 people had been evacuated from the province of Pinar del Rio. So far there is no information about the dead, the AP points out.
On Friday night, the hurricane was 165 km west of Havana and was traveling northwest at a speed of 24 km / h.
Weather forecasters are unanimous that Ida will intensify in the Gulf and become a powerful hurricane when it reaches the Mississippi River Delta late Sunday.
The disastrous Katrina
If the predictions come true, Ida will hit on the same date that 16 years ago, Katrina, like a 3rd degree hurricane, hit with a wind speed of 201 km / h south of New Orleans.
Katrina killed 1,800 people from the central coast of Louisiana to the state border between Mississippi and Alabama. The hurricane swept the coast, and the federal dike system in New Orleans failed, and 80 percent of the city was under water. Many houses were flooded to the roofs, and their inhabitants drowned in the attics. The stadium and the congress center of New Orleans have become scenes of incredible misery, where tens of thousands of people were left without electricity and running water, reminds AP.
Memories of Hurricane Katrina still haunt many who are rushing to prepare for Ida’s arrival, attacking shops and gas stations, the agency said.
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