2021-08-30 07:00:00
As the sun rises, teams fan out to assess the magnitude of the Louisiana disaster. And to assess the danger that is far from over.
The catastrophe: Storm “Ida” reached the coast of the USA on Sunday followingnoon. A category four hurricane. At more than 240 kilometers per hour, the wind rips roofs off houses in the city of Port Fourchon, around 160 kilometers south of New Orleans. Television images show power poles being knocked over like dominoes. The storm is so strong that the flow of the Mississippi reverses. In the areas around New Orleans and Baton Rouge, the power supply collapses. More than a million people depend on generators.
“I can’t tell you when power will be restored, I can’t tell you by when all the debris will be cleared,” state Gov. John Bel Edwards said Monday. “It was a catastrophic storm.” In the metropolitan city of New Orleans, power was still completely out.
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It is the fifth strongest hurricane to ever hit the US coast. The strongest ever recorded in Louisiana. 16 years to the day following Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. The storm has since weakened to category one, but is still moving across the country. In particular, the persistent heavy rainfall might make the situation even more dangerous for millions.
In New Orleans, part of a roof in the French Quarter lies on the ground. © Eric Gay/AP/dpa
Governor Edwards addressed the population the following morning with an appeal: “When the sun comes up this morning, please stay where you are. Ida flooded streets, left debris, destroyed power lines, it’s dangerous.”
The storm hits hospitals particularly hard
So far, only two deaths have been confirmed, but many areas in Louisiana remain inaccessible to emergency services. The big chaos like following “Katrina” didn’t appear at first. At that time, more than 1,400 people had died. After the disaster, New Orleans invested heavily in infrastructure security and renewed dikes. So far they hold up. However, Ramsey Green, who is jointly responsible for the infrastructure in New Orleans, warned: the levees may hold. However, the city’s underfunded sewage system cannot absorb the expected rainfall, and there is also a lack of powerful pumps.
The storm hits hospitals particularly hard. Due to low vaccination rates, intensive care units across the state are at capacity. Numerous hospitals were therefore not evacuated – there was simply no place to take the patients. All hospitals have backup generators. But that wasn’t always enough.
The size of the storm is clearly visible on the satellite image. © dpa
At the Thibodaux Regional Hospital west of New Orleans, two of the five generators suddenly failed, leaving the intensive care unit temporarily without power. Since the elevators didn’t work either, the ventilated patients had to be taken to other parts of the building via the stairwell. At least two other hospitals in the area reported similar problems.
According to forecasts, the storm should now continue to move beyond Louisiana to Mississippi. “If you had to pick the worst possible path for the storm to take, it would have been pretty much the way it’s taking now,” Governor Edwards told the AP. Because on Ida’s way are several chemical plants and 17 oil refineries, which account for a good 20 percent of US production. If they are damaged, there is a risk not only of economic damage but also of an environmental catastrophe. A spokesman for the Louisiana Department of the Environment announced plans to use planes to monitor the situation as soon as the storm permits.
5,000 civil protection workers swarmed out on Monday morning
What makes “Ida” so dangerous is the speed at which the storm suddenly intensified. According to an analyst with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this was possible because of the high surface temperature of the water in the Gulf of Mexico. Favorable winds in the upper atmosphere lowered the air pressure inside the storm, resulting in a vent effect. Within a few hours the wind increased by regarding 80 km/h.
Kerry Emanuel, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sees a direct link between these types of lightning-fast hurricanes and climate change. “We’re going to see many more storms that intensify extremely just before they make landfall,” he wrote in an analysis for the American Meteorological Society. The kind of storms, actually a once-in-a-century event, might soon occur every five or ten years.
First fatality from fallen tree Nearly a million people without power because of Hurricane “Ida”.
On Monday morning, 5,000 civil protection workers swarmed out with 195 flood vehicles, 73 boats and 34 helicopters to begin rescue work. US President Joe Biden has meanwhile promised financial support to the affected areas. As “Ida” continues to weaken, meteorologists are predicting tornadoes in the region on Tuesday.
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