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Hurricane Ida, a dangerous Category 4 storm, made landfall in the Gulf Coast state of Louisiana Sunday on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's devastation.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Ida came ashore packing winds of up to 240 kilometers per hour.
Hurricane warnings were in effect for Intracoastal City, Louisiana to the mouth of the Pearl River as well as Lake Pontchartrain, Lake Maurepas and metropolitan New Orleans.
On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina came ashore in Louisiana as a Category 3 storm. Katrina was blamed for 1,800 deaths, levee breaches and devastating flooding in New Orleans. The city's federal levee system has been improved since then.
Ahead of Ida's arrival, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards warned those in its path that they should prepare to shelter in place instead of trying to evacuate.
"If you are in Hurricane #Ida's path, your only job right now is to stay safely in place. Find the safest place in your house, ride out the storm and stay there until the storm passes," he wrote on Twitter.
Edwards declared a state of emergency and said 5,000 National Guard troops were standing by along the coast for search and rescue efforts. In addition, 10,000 linemen were ready to respond to electrical outages once the storm passed.
"We're going to catch it head-on," Bebe McElroy told the AP as she prepared to leave her home in the coastal Louisiana village of Cocodrie. "I'm just going around praying, saying, 'Dear Lord, just watch over us.'"
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell ordered people who live outside the city's protective levee system to evacuate.
"The forecast track has it headed straight toward New Orleans. Not good," said Jim Kossin, a senior scientist with The Climate Service, a private consulting company.
From southeast Louisiana to coastal Mississippi and Alabama, total rainfall could range from 20 to more than 40 centimeters, with more than 50 centimeters possible in some areas, the government weather service said. Heavy rain and storm surges could cause widespread flooding in the area.
In Alabama, Governor Kay Ivey declared a state of emergency for coastal and western counties in the state.
The Gulf Coast region's hospitals now face a natural disaster as they are struggling with a surge in patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, due to the highly contagious delta variant.
"COVID has certainly added a challenge to this storm," Mike Hulefeld, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Ochsner Health, told the Associated Press.
Since the start of the pandemic, Louisiana has had 679,796 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 12,359 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Its vaccine tracker says just 41.01% of the state's nearly 4.7 million population are vaccinated.
"Once again we find ourselves dealing with a natural disaster in the midst of a pandemic," Jennifer Avegno, the top health official for New Orleans, told the AP.
Ida made landfall Friday in Cuba, and by Saturday the clean-up was under way. Trees were toppled and buildings damaged, but no deaths were reported.
Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.