Rainfall from Hurricane Nate lashed south-east Louisiana on Saturday afternoon, as the storm made landfall at the mouth of the Mississippi River and residents in vulnerable, low-lying areas fled. At least 21 people were killed during the storm’s passage across Central America this week.“It’s coming,” Larry Bertron said as he and his wife Kimberlee prepared to leave their home in the Braithwaite community in vulnerable Plaquemines Parish. They lost one home in southern Louisiana to Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Now they were preparing to leave the home they rebuilt after Hurricane Isaac in 2012.
“This will be it,” said Bertron, who complained that local officials had not done enough to improve levees. “If it floods again, this will be it. I can’t live on promises.”
A 7pm curfew was declared for New Orleans, where fragile pumping and drainage systems could face a major test once Nate strikes. Weaknesses – including the failure of some pumps and power-generating turbines – were exposed after a deluge on 5 August flooded homes and businesses in some sections of the city.
Hurricane conditions were expected along the northern Gulf Coast and a state of emergency was declared for Mississippi’s six southernmost counties. Residents there and in coastal Alabama were warned to take shelter or get out of the storm’s way.
“This is the worst hurricane that has impacted Mississippi since Hurricane Katrina,” Mississippi emergency management director Lee Smithson said. “Everyone needs to understand that, that this is a significantly dangerous situation.”
On Alabama’s Dauphin Island, water had begun washing over the road on the island’s low-lying west end, said mayor Jeff Collier. The storm was projected to bring storm surges from 7ft to 11ft near the Alabama-Mississippi state line. Some of the biggest impacts could be at the top of funnel-shaped Mobile Bay.
The window for preparing was “quickly closing”, Alabama emergency management agency director Brian Hastings said.
Florida governor Rick Scott warned residents of the Panhandle to prepare for Nate’s impact. The governor said residents in evacuation zones in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties should heed warnings and seek shelter from the storm. Shelters would be available to people who have nowhere else to go, he said.
“Hurricane Nate is expected to bring life-threatening storm surges, strong winds and tornados that could reach across the Panhandle,” Scott said.
The evacuations affected roughly 100,000 residents in the western Panhandle. The Pensacola International Airport announced it would close at 6pm on Saturday and remain closed on Sunday.
The Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport remained open. “The airport does not close,” spokeswoman Michelle Wilcut said. “We are urging customers to check with their specific airlines to see whether their flights have been canceled because there have been some of those.”
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Nate made landfall on Saturday evening as a category 1 storm with winds of 85 mph (137 kph).
Waterside sections of New Orleans, outside the city’s levee system, were under an evacuation order. About 2,000 people were affected. Not everyone was complying. Gabriel Black of New Orleans’ Venetian Isles community sent his wife, a friend and three dogs to a hotel in the city. He stayed behind because an 81-year-old neighbor refused to leave.
“I know it sounds insane, but he has bad legs and he doesn’t have anybody who can get to him,” Black said.
Others nearby were staying as well. Nancy and Cleve Bell said their house was built so high off the ground that it stayed dry in the floods after Hurricane Katrina. Nancy Bell said they had a generator and plenty of supplies and would be safe.
Forecasters said Nate could dump 3in to 6in of rain with isolated totals of up to 10in. The National Hurricane Center said a hurricane warning was in effect from Grand Isle, Louisiana, to the Alabama-Florida border. A hurricane warning was also in effect for metropolitan New Orleans and nearby Lake Pontchartrain. Tropical storm warnings extended west of Grand Isle to Morgan City, Louisiana, and around Lake Maurepas and east of the Alabama-Florida border to the Okaloosa-Walton County line in the Florida Panhandle.
Hurricanes have posed challenges for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this summer. The AP reported after Hurricane Harvey that at least seven environmentally dangerous sites in and around Houston went underwater during that record-shattering storm.
In Mississippi on Saturday EPA officials were releasing 40m gallons of partially treated wastewater in advance of Nate’s arrival, in an attempt to prevent a worse leak from the closed Mississippi Phosphates plant in Pascagoula, a site with a history of damaging spills.
Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards said he spoke to President Donald Trump on Saturday morning. “He assured me that LA would have all the assistance we need,” the governor said on Twitter.
The president, who was at his golf club in Virginia before attending a fundraiser in South Carolina on Saturday night, approved an emergency declaration for a large part of Louisiana and ordered federal assistance.
Trump has faced sustained criticism over his response to the aftermath of hurricanes Jose and Maria in Puerto Rico – sizeable storms which followed Harvey in Texas and Irma in Miami in a costly hurricane season.
He said on Twitter: “Our great team at Fema [Federal Emergency Management Administration] is prepared for Hurricane Nate. Everyone in LA, MS, AL and FL please listen to your local authorities and be safe.”
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