Ida Intensifies Into a Category 4 Hurricane Poised to Strike New Orleans
Storm with winds up to 125 miles an hour at landfall is expected to be fiercest to hit city since Hurricane Katrina caused mass destruction
NEW ORLEANS—New Orleans is bracing for Hurricane Ida to make landfall Sunday in what is expected to be the fiercest storm to strike the city since the mass destruction of Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago.
Normally busy streets were largely empty Sunday morning after many people in the hurricane’s path heeded evacuation orders, while those who stayed behind hunkered down for Ida’s arrival.
Ida intensified early Sunday to a Category 4 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 150 miles per hour, after crossing the warmest and deepest part of the Gulf of Mexico. The storm, now at the second-highest classification for hurricanes, was expected to make landfall in southeast Louisiana at about 1 p.m., the National Weather Service in New Orleans said.
The region could see rainfall of up to 20 inches or more, with winds up to 125 miles an hour at landfall, and dangerous storm surges, the weather service said. A surge of 12 to 16 feet is expected at Port Fourchon, La., south of New Orleans, to the mouth of the Mississippi River. Tornadoes were possible from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle. The weather service also issued an extreme wind warning for areas near New Orleans on Sunday.
“If you are under a mandatory evacuation…LEAVE NOW!” the weather service in New Orleans warned Saturday evening. “You do not want to play around with your life, and it is not worth it to stay if you have the means to leave.”
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards had warned residents Saturday to complete their preparations and find a place to ride out the storm. “This will be one of the strongest hurricanes to hit anywhere in Louisiana since at least the 1850s,” the governor said.
The storm is likely to be the biggest test yet for New Orleans’s $14.5 billion flood-protection system, which was designed to prevent a repeat of the catastrophic flooding and destruction following Katrina. The hurricane, which made landfall exactly 16 years ago to the day, killed more than 1,800 people and caused more than $100 billion in property damage.
The new system includes flood walls, levees, canals and barriers constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
The Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority said Saturday that it closed a series of floodgates in the federal levee system to prevent storm surge ahead of the hurricane. New Orleans’s police and fire departments staged boats and high-water vehicles in flood-prone areas.
In New Orleans, it was drizzling slightly Sunday morning with a few wind gusts as gray clouds swept over the city. Few cars passed as the city was on lockdown.
Restaurants, bars and other businesses in and around New Orleans had been closed since Saturday afternoon. Stores, bars and restaurants were boarded up and fortified with sandbags as early as Saturday. Even 24-7 dive bars such as Ms. Mae’s and Brothers 3 closed Saturday morning. Only a Walmart, a Winn-Dixie and a few other stores were open Saturday in the city’s uptown neighborhood.
Many people in low-lying areas had moved their cars to higher ground. By Saturday night, only a few people strolled down Bourbon Street in the normally packed French Quarter.
Austin Lane, 38 years old, who owns a Mexican restaurant called El Cucuy, planned to ride out the storm Sunday just to the north in Carriere, Miss. He drove out of New Orleans Saturday afternoon with his girlfriend, Meghan Ackerman, 40, their four dogs, two cats and two chickens.
Most of his 19 employees also evacuated, some to Houston and one to as far away as Missouri, he said.
To hunker down, the couple brought a generator, headlamps, candles, two crates of water, sausage, and a bottle of bourbon. If the winds pick up at the property they own, they plan to use two cat carriers to bring the chickens indoors.
“By no means is it a supersafe destination,” Mr. Lane said. “It’s still in the path of the hurricane. It’s just the best I could do after I got my people out and could lock the place up.”
Making landfall in Louisiana on Sunday, Ida is stirring up a sense of dread that reminded residents of the catastrophic damage and loss of life caused by Katrina 16 years ago.
“As it falls on the date of Katrina, people are pretty spooked and taking it serious and evacuating,” Mr. Lane said.
New Orleans ordered residents living outside the city’s levee system to evacuate. Electric utilities were mobilizing more than 10,000 workers across the state to address power outages, officials said.
The National Hurricane Center issued a hurricane warning for New Orleans, Lake Pontchartrain and Lake Maurepas in Louisiana, and along the Gulf Coast from Intracoastal City to the mouth of the Pearl River at the Louisiana-Mississippi border.
On Saturday, traffic leaving the city on Interstate 10 over Lake Pontchartrain had been bumper-to-bumper as people evacuated. But some stayed behind to ride out the storm.
In Houma, La., which is expected to get 10 feet of storm surge, Dr. Howard Russell, 65, said he was planning to stay home Sunday, even though his daughter Gabrielle Russell, a 23-year-old nursing student, evacuated from New Orleans to Kingwood, Texas.
Ms. Russell said she was worried about her father staying in the house where she grew up, because there is a lake beyond their backyard. “We’ll be experiencing quite a few feet of water. You just never know how much rain can build up," she said.
Her father, who will be in the house alone, boarded up its front door and planned to watch the news Sunday. He said he has enough gas to run his generator for a week and supplies to last a month. But he was still hoping that the storm would pass and that he would be able to drive to work Monday morning.
“It’s not my first rodeo,” Dr. Russell said. “My biggest fears are all my shingles coming off my roof.”