TIDAL wave of relief on way
A MANHATTAN pizzeria has joined forces with rapper JAY-Z to provide hurricane relief supplies to hard-hit Puerto Rico and Mexico.
Brooklyn Councilman Robert Cornegy Jr. (D-Bedford-Stuyvesant) was among the volunteers loading boxes of toilet paper, water bottles and diapers into a 17-foot truck parked outside Champion Pizza in Greenwich Village Friday.
The supplies will be flown to the storm devastated regions on a cargo plane chartered by JAY-Z’s music-streaming company TIDAL.
“This is what we do when there is a crisis,” Cornegy Jr. said. “This is how we show love.”
Hakki Akdeniz, 37, owner of Champion Pizza, said he was moved to help after hearing from several friends in Puerto Rico.
“They’re really suffering,” Akdeniz said.
“They don’t have water. They don’t have food. They don’t have nothing.” A TROPICAL STORM that killed at least 22 people in Central America is expected to strengthen into a hurricane this weekend before barreling into the U.S. Gulf Coast near New Orleans.
Officials in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama declared states of emergency Friday as Tropical Storm Nate zoomed toward the Gulf of Mexico.
The storm was forecast to gain strength before roaring onshore near New Orleans as a Category 1 hurricane late Saturday.
The National Hurricane Center warned of “life-threatening storm surge flooding” along the northern Gulf Coast.
“We are in the direct line of this storm and are preparing for the worst,” Louisiana Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser said on CNN.
The storm is expected to dump upward of 3 inches of rain and raise water levels by as much as 4 to 7 feet along the northern Gulf Coast.
Hurricane and storm surge warnings were put into effect for a swath of the coast stretching from New Orleans to the Florida border.
Nungesser said officials fear impacts rivaling Hurricane Katrina when New Orleans’ levees gave way turning parts of the city into a roaring river. “We are concerned about the levees under construction because they will not take storm surge very long on the newly constructed levees,” Nungesser said. “That is a big concern.” Some 1,300 National Guard troops were preparing to mobilize, with 15 deployed to New Orleans to monitor its 120 drain pumps, officials said. The storm was packing 60 mph sustained winds as it bore down on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula Friday evening. Nate pounded Nicaragua and Costa Rica with drenching rains that triggered flash floods and mudslides.
The storm was blamed for 15 deaths in Nicaragua and seven in Costa Rica where another 15 people were reported missing.
Nate is projected to be the third hurricane to strike the continental U.S. in less than two months. Harvey lashed Texas in late August before Irma battered the west coast of Florida.
Mandatory evacuations were ordered in the parts of New Orleans outside the city’s levee system.
Dozens of offshore oil and gas platforms across the Gulf states were also evacuated ahead of the storm.
In storm-ravaged Florida, Gov. Rick Scott ordered a state of emergency for 29 of the Sunshine State’s northern counties.