Hurricane Ida pummels Louisiana
Cat 4 storm delivers 150 mph winds
NEW ORLEANS – Hurricane Ida blasted ashore Sunday as one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the U.S., rushing from the Louisiana coast toward New Orleans and one of the nation’s most important industrial corridors.
The Category 4 storm with winds of 150 mph hit on the same date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier, coming ashore about 45 miles west of where Category 3 Katrina first struck land.
The rising ocean swamped the barrier island of Grand Isle as landfall came just to the west at Port Fourchon. Ida made a second landfall about 2 hours later near Galliano. The hurricane was churning through the far southern Louisiana wetlands, with the more than 2 million people living in and around New Orleans and Baton Rouge up next.
“This is not the kind of storm that we normally get. This is going to be much stronger than we usually see and, quite frankly, if you had to draw up the worst possible path for a hurricane in Louisiana, it would be something very, very close to what we’re seeing,” Gov. John Bel Edwards told the Associated Press.
People in Louisiana woke up to a monster storm after Ida’s top winds grew by 45 mph in 5 hours as the hurri
cane moved through some of the warmest ocean water in the world in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
Wind tore at awnings and water began spilling out of Lake Ponchartrain in New Orleans. Officials there said Ida’s swift intensification from a few thunderstorms to massive hurricane over three days left no time to organize a mandatory evacuation of its 390,000 residents.
Mayor Latoya Cantrell urged residents to leave voluntarily. Those who stayed were warned to prepare for long power outages amid sweltering heat.
Nick Mosca was walking his dog, like most of those who were out Sunday morning.
“I’d like to be better prepared. There’s a few things I’m thinking we could have done. But this storm came pretty quick, so you only have the time you have,” Mosca said.
Ida’s 150 mph winds tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever hit the mainland U.S. Those winds whipped through Port Fourchon, where boats and helicopters gather to take workers and supplies to oil platforms in the ocean and the oil extracted starts its journey toward refineries. The port handles about a fifth of the nation’s domestic oil and gas, officials said.
Edwards said he watched a live video feed from the port area as Ida came ashore.
“The storm surge is just tremendous. We can see the roofs have been blown off of the port buildings in many places,” Edwards told the AP.
President Joe Biden approved emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi ahead of Ida’s arrival. He said Sunday the country was praying for the best for Louisiana and preparing for the worst.
“As soon as the storm passes, we’re going to put the country’s full might behind the rescue and recovery,” Biden said.
Cars were parked on the median Sunday in New Orleans, which is a few feet higher and can protect against potential flooding.
Most businesses were closed, but Breads on Oak, located three blocks from the Mississippi River levee, was open and offering two-for-one deals to get as much of their baked goods sold as possible.
“Everybody’s like, ‘Oooh, we need our hurricane pastries,’ ” co-owner Chamain O’mahony said. “So everyone’s coming out for hurricane food – biscuits and a lot of cinnamon rolls and brioche. You want treats. And you want bread.”
Once conditions got too rough or the inventory ran out, O’mahony and her husband planned to ride out the storm in an apartment they usually rent attached to the bakery.
Along with the oil industry, Ida threatened a region already reeling from a resurgence of COVID-19 infections, due to low vaccination rates and the highly contagious delta variant. More than 2 million people live around New Orleans, Baton Rouge and the wetlands to the south.
New Orleans hospitals planned to ride out the storm with their beds nearly full, as similarly stressed hospitals elsewhere had little room for evacuated patients.
And shelters for those fleeing their homes carried an added risk of becoming flashpoints for new infections.
Forecasters warned winds stronger than 115 mph were expected in Houma, a city of 33,000 that supports oil platforms in the Gulf, and Gulfport, Mississippi, to the east of New Orleans was seeing the ocean rise and heavy rains bands. Empty lots where houses once stood before Katrina are still common in coastal Mississippi, and Claudette Jones evacuated her home east of Gulfport as waves started pounding the shore.
Edwards warned his state they face difficult days, if not weeks recovering from the storm.
“Many, many people are going to be tested in ways that we can only imagine today. But I can also tell you that as a state we have never been more prepared,” the governor told a news conference.
Comparisons to the Aug. 29, 2005, landfall of Katrina weighed heavily on residents bracing for Ida. A Category 3 storm, Katrina was blamed for 1,800 deaths as it caused levee breaches and catastrophic flooding in New Orleans and demolished oceanfront homes in Mississippi. Ida’s hurricane force winds stretched less than 40 miles from the storm’s eye, or less than half the size of Katrina.
Officials stressed that the levee and drainage systems protecting New Orleans had been much improved since Katrina.
But they cautioned flooding was still possible, with up to 24 inches of rain forecast in some areas.
“Ida will most definitely be stronger than Katrina, and by a pretty big margin,’’ said University of Miami hurricane researcher Brian Mcnoldy. “And, the worst of the storm will pass over New Orleans and Baton Rouge, which got the weaker side of Katrina.”
Hurricane Ida nearly doubled in strength, going from an 85 mph storm to a 150 mph storm in just 24 hours, which meteorologists called “explosive intensification.”