Officials decided against evacuating New Orleans hospitals. A tropical storm warning was extended to the Mississippi-Alabama line. He added: “Anybody that isn’t concerned has got something wrong with them.”Ī hurricane warning was issued for most of the Louisiana coast from Intracoastal City to the mouth of the Pearl River. “With a direct hit, ain’t no telling what’s going to be left - if anything,” Eichorn said. Ross Eichorn, a fishing guide on the coast about 70 miles (112 kilometers) southwest of New Orleans, said he fears warm Gulf waters will “make a monster” out of Ida. The storm is expected to make landfall on the exact date Hurricane Katrina devastated a large swath of the Gulf Coast exactly 16 years earlier. Other areas across the coastal region were under a mix of voluntary and mandatory evacuations. Collin Arnold, the city’s emergency management director, said the city could be under high winds for about ten hours. “The city cannot order a mandatory evacuation because we don’t have the time,” Cantrell said.Ĭity officials said residents need to be prepared for prolonged power outages, and asked elderly residents to consider evacuating. That generally calls for using all lanes of some highways to leave the city. But with the storm intensifying so much over a short time, she said it wasn’t possible to do so for the entire city. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell ordered a mandatory evacuation for a small area of the city outside the levee system. The governor urged residents to quickly prepare, saying: “By nightfall tomorrow night, you need to be where you intend to be to ride out the storm.” “This will be a life-altering storm for those who aren’t prepared,” National Weather Service meteorologist Benjamin Schott said during a Friday news conference with Louisiana Gov. The National Hurricane Center predicted Ida would strengthen into an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane, with top winds of 140 mph (225 kph) before making landfall along the U.S. Ida intensified rapidly Friday from a tropical storm to a hurricane with top winds of 80 mph (128 kph) as it crossed western Cuba and entered the Gulf of Mexico. NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Hurricane Ida struck Cuba on Friday and threatened to slam into Louisiana with devastating force over the weekend, prompting evacuations in New Orleans and across the coastal region.