US Gulf Coast Brace for Hurricane Aida Landing After Cuba Attacks

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Hurricane Aida stirs Cuba on Friday for a weekend US landing along the Louisiana coast, smashing Cuba with roof-splitting forces, urging the Gulf of Mexico’s flood-prone New Orleans neighborhood and oil rigs to evacuate bottom.

By late Friday, Aida was crammed with sustained winds at 80 mph (129 kph), according to the National Weather Service. night.

According to forecasters, Aida landed in the United States as a powerful Category 4 storm on a five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, with stable winds near 140 mph, heavy rains, and most of Louisiana’s coastline a few feet below the surface. It is said that it will generate a high tide that is expected to plunge. ..

According to the National Hurricane Center, flooding from the Aida storm surge (a storm surge caused by hurricane winds) reaches 10 to 15 feet near the mouth of the Mississippi River and extends east along the adjacent coastline of the Mississippi River and Alabama. It can be low level. ..

Inland floods were also expected due to scattered tornadoes, widespread power outages, and torrential rains throughout the region.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards urged residents to prepare for a hurricane immediately.

“Now is the time to get your preparations done,” he told a press conference on Friday afternoon. “You need to be in the place where you intend to survive the storm by nightfall tomorrow night.”

New Orleans officials have ordered residents to evacuate communities outside the city’s embankment system and posted voluntary evacuation notices in the remaining parishes.

Mayor of Baton Rouge, Sharon Weston Broome, signed an emergency disaster declaration, stating that as part of the storm preparation, the city had pre-positioned sand and sandbags in eight strategic locations.

Haley Delone, 29, a lifelong resident of the Gulf, told Reuters on Friday night that she boarded the window of his house in Gulfport, Mississippi, to collect food to survive the storm.

“Hurricanes have always been a part of my life,” said a high school theology teacher born during Category 5 Hurricane Andrew in 1992. “You just read your list and want the best.”

Edwards declared an emergency on Thursday, and on Friday President Joe Biden issued a pre-landing federal emergency declaration at Edwards’ request. We have empowered the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate state disaster relief operations.

Edwards also said he had approved the activation of all 5,000 troops of the Louisiana Guard for emergency deployment as needed.

Energy companies competing for a complete evacuation of the Gulf maritime platform before the storm have cut oil production by about 60% and gas production by almost half, according to federal regulators.

Caribbean is the first hit

Immediately after upgrading from a tropical cyclone to a hurricane, Aida crashed into a small Cuban youth island on the southwestern tip of the Caribbean island nation, knocking down trees and tearing roofs from dwellings.

The streets of Havana, the capital, were empty as residents hid themselves at home prior to Aida’s arrival. Government forecasters have warned that it could bring storm surges to the west coast of Cuba.

Jamaica was hit by heavy rain and landslides occurred after the storm had passed. Many roads were impassable and some residents were forced to abandon their homes.

According to forecasts, Aida, the fourth hurricane in the ninth-named storm in the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, was the last category-four storm to hit Louisiana by the time it landed on Hurricane Laura. It can go far beyond strength. However, it is inferior to Katrina, a Category 5 storm of monsters that devastated the area in August 2005 and killed more than 1,800 people.

In preparation for the storm, US coastal officials urged residents to move boats from the port and encouraged early evacuation.

Officials in the Lafourche Parish, Louisiana, said they would establish voluntary evacuation, especially for people in lowlands, mobile homes and motorhomes.

Maria Caspani and Steve Gorman

Reuters

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