“Powerful and dangerous” Hurricane Ida about to fall in Louisiana

NEW ORLEANS, Aug. 29 (Reuters) – Hurricane Ida was about to make landfall in the United States on Sunday as an extremely dangerous Category 4 storm that could submerge much of the Louisiana coastline underwater while the state faces a COVID-19 the rise already burdens hospitals.

Ida picked up more strength overnight, faster than meteorologists had predicted just a day ago. It is the toughest test to date for the hundreds of miles of new dikes built around New Orleans after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which hit land 16 years ago, historically flooding black neighborhoods and killing more than 1,800 people.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said the storm, which would arrive Sunday afternoon, could be the state’s worst direct blow since the 1850s.

The state also ranks the third-highest rate of new COVID-19 infection in the country, with only 3,400 new cases reported on Friday alone. Hospitals treated about 2,450 patients with COVID-19, Edwards said, and those in many parishes in the state were already approaching capacity.

Earlier Sunday, Ida was a five-step Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said. At 11 a.m. CDT (1600 GMT) was located about 95 miles west-southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi River and about 135 miles south of New Orleans, with sustained winds in excess of 150 miles per hour ( 240 km per hour).

On Sunday morning, the rain swept through New Orleans, where Robert Ruffin, a 68-year-old retiree, had evacuated with his family to a hotel in the center of his home east of the city.

“I thought it was safer,” he said. “This time it’s double problem due to COVID.”

According to the NHC, the IDA landing was just hours away, warning of life-threatening storm surges, potentially catastrophic wind damage and flooding.

“We’re as prepared as we can be, but we care about those dikes,” said Kirk Lepine, president of Plaquemines Parish on the state’s Gulf Coast.

Plaquemines is one of the most vulnerable parishes, home to 23,000 people along the Gulf of Mississippi Delta. Lepine feared that the dikes on Highway 23 would not live up to the task.

“The water could go over it,” he said. “This is our way in and out.”

Edwards told CNN Sunday that he believed the state’s dikes could withstand the storm, though he expressed some doubt about parishes, such as Plaquemines, in the south.

“Where we are least secure is in the south, where there are other protection systems that are not built to the same standard,” he said. “That’s where we’re most concerned about the impact of storm surges.”

He said there were no plans on Saturday to evacuate patients from hospitals and that state officials had been talking to hospitals to make sure their generators were working and that they had more water within reach than normal.

Officials ordered widespread evacuations from low-lying and coastal areas, clogging highways and causing some gas stations to remain dry while residents and tourists fled.

“It’s a powerful and dangerous storm. It’s moving faster than we thought, so we have a little less time to prepare,” said Dr. Joseph Kanter, chief physician in Louisiana. “There’s a lot of COVID out there, there’s a lot of risk.”

POWER POWERS ARE EXPECTED

Utility companies incorporated equipment and additional equipment to deal with projected energy losses. U.S. President Joe Biden said he has coordinated with electrical services and that 500 federal emergency response workers were in Texas and Louisiana to respond to the storm. Read more

U.S. energy companies cut offshore oil production by 91 percent and gasoline refineries cut operations at Louisiana plants in the wake of the storm. Regional fuel prices rose in anticipation of production losses and rising demand due to evacuations. Read more

Coastal and inland oil refineries also began to reduce production due to the storm. Phillips 66 closed its Alliance onshore plant in Belle Chasse, while Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) cut production at the Baton Rouge, Louisiana refinery on Saturday. Read more

Jean Paul Bourg, 39, planned to get out of the storm in Morgan City, about 112 miles west of New Orleans. His wife’s brother was recently released from hospital after contracting COVID-19 and got a generator to ensure access to oxygen if needed.

“You don’t necessarily have to pile up with family members during COVID,” Bourg said, after cutting down trees and placing plywood in his home. “There are more people than you would think.”

Reports by Devika Krishna Kumar in New Orleans, Jessica Resnick-Ault and Jonathan Allen in New York, Erwin Seba in Houston, Rich McKay in Atlanta and Arpan Varghese in Bengaluru; Written by Jessica Resnick-Ault and Jonathan Allen Edited by Caroline Stauffer, Leslie Adler, Frances Kerry and Bill Berkrot

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