A strengthening Tropical Storm Lee lurched toward the US Gulf Coast yesterday, dumping heavy rain on Louisiana and threatening extensive flooding that will put the New Orleans levee system to the test.
Oil companies evacuated workers from offshore rigs ahead of the arrival of Lee, a disorganized but major rainmaker, while Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency.
“Flooding is our primary concern,” Jindal said on Friday, urging residents to “prepare for the worst and hope for the best”.
Officials warned that the slow-moving storm could bring the same kind of flooding that residents in the northeast are still grappling with after Hurricane Irene tore up the US East Coast last weekend, leaving nearly 50 people dead and millions of households without power.
With experts forecasting the storm will turn to the northeast and push inland, one of the biggest dangers from Lee could be in the Appalachians.
“If we get the 12.5 to 25 cm that come out into a tropical storm in that kind of terrain, the flash flooding is fast and it’s violent,” Bill Read, director of the National Hurricane Centre in Miami, told reporters.
At 2 p.m. yesterday, Lee was 70 km south of New Iberia, Louisiana, packing sustained winds of 60 miles per hour, the NHC said. With some areas forecast to receive up to half a metreof rain over the Labour Day holiday weekend, residents of coastal states as well as landlocked Kentucky and Tennessee should prepare themselves for extensive flooding, he cautioned.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported several Louisiana parishes were distributing sandbags and issuing evacuation orders for the lowest-lying areas.
Lee was battering the Gulf Coast six years after the region was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.
The levee system around New Orleans failed after Katrina, putting much of the city underwater. More than 1,500 people died.
Last Monday, Katrina’s sixth anniversary, the Times-Picayune reported that an upcoming Army Corps of Engineers report gives the levee system a “near-failing grade,” despite a $10 billion post-Katrina rebuilding job.
The intense rain that Lee is already dumping on the city is expected to provide the most severe test of the levee and canal systems at Lake Pontchartrain and elsewhere since Hurricane Gustav came close to overwhelming the levees three years ago.
Earlier last week, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said the water pumps that are key to the city’s flood mitigation are “100 per cent operational”.
Meanwhile, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour declared a state of emergency in several counties, urging residents to prepare well in advance.