Louisiana, already battered by Laura, hunkers down for Delta
BATON ROUGE: Residents of Louisiana, still battered from Hurricane Laura, fled inland or hunkered down yesterday as Hurricane Delta barrelled towards the state, growing in size and force as it spun across the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
The storm, packing winds of up to 185kmh, ranked as a category 3 hurricane on the SaffirSimpson Hurricane Wind Scale yesterday and National Hurricane Centre (NHC) forecasters expected it to strengthen before making landfall overnight.
‘‘They never had time to recover from Laura and now this next storm is hitting them. They never had time to get back on their feet and they didn’t think they could survive the second one,’’ Cathy Evans (63) said of her daughter’s family as she helped them move out of their Lake Charles home.
Evans, who travelled to Lake Charles from Texarkana, Arkansas, left with her daughter and family for Texas yesterday as Louisiana was closing its flood control gates.
Delta was forecast to make landfall overnight in hardhit southwest Louisiana, between the cities of Lake Charles and Lafayette, said Benjamin Schott, chief meteorologist of the National Weather Service office in New Orleans.
The storm could drive a 1.2m3.3m storm surge up Vermilion Bay on the coast, the NHC said. It could also unleash tornadoes as it moves over land and drop up to 25cm of rain.
WalMart was closing many stores across the Gulf Coast.
The US Coast Guard warned shippers of impending gale force winds from Port Arthur, Texas, to New Orleans.
Southwestern Louisiana bore the brunt of Hurricane Laura’s fierce winds and storm surge in August. There are about 8000 people still living in hotel rooms as a result of the devastation to homes in the southwest of the state from Laura.
When Delta reaches the Gulf Coast, it will be the 10th named storm to make a US landfall this year, eclipsing a record set in 1916. — Reuters