BILOXI, Miss. — This year’s crushing hurricanes have submerged Houston, wrecked the Florida Keys, and decimated Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, but they spared the central Gulf Coast — until now.
Hurricane Nate, the fourth hurricane to lash the United States in just over six weeks, gained strength Saturday and made landfall in southeast Louisiana, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, as a Category 1 system.
The governors of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi declared states of emergency ahead of the storm, and counties along the coast issued curfews and ordered evacuations. Some beachfront hotels and casinos were evacuated.
“Sooner or later, living here, you’re going to get hit,’’ Rich Hazen, 52, of Diamondhead, Miss., said as he stopped for a coffee, having prepared his generator, cleared his yard, and gathered drinking water.
After amassing power in the Gulf of Mexico, the hurricane raced toward land and was lashing coastal cities with rain by late afternoon. Some areas were expected to receive 6 to 10 inches of rain as the storm passed through, although forecasters said a “life-threatening’’ storm surge, an abnormal rise in water levels of up to several feet, as well as wind were likely to cause the biggest problems.
Governor John Bel Edwards of Louisiana said Saturday afternoon that Nate was moving at “an extremely fast rate’’ of 26 miles per hour, which he said was “almost unheard-of for a storm of this type.’’
Even though its speed would limit the amount of time it could deluge any single place, Edwards said, “this is a very dangerous storm nonetheless.’’
“It has proven to be very deadly in Honduras and Nicaragua and that area,’’ Edwards said. “We have to make sure we are not taking it lightly.’’ At least 22 storm-related deaths have been reported in Central America.
The hurricane hit the same stretch of coast that is, in many ways, still recovering from Hurricane Katrina in 2005. At the 17th Street Canal between New Orleans and Metairie, La., workers from the Army Corps of Engineers lowered a set of enormous gates at the mouth of the canal.
In 2005, there were no gates there or at the three other rainwater drainage canals in New Orleans. Katrina’s surge pushed water from Lake Pontchartrain deep into the canals. When levees along those canals breached, much of the city was inundated and stayed underwater for weeks, until the breaches could be closed and the neighborhoods pumped dry. The corps later acknowledged the hurricane protection system it built was “a system in name only.’’
Now the corps is building permanent pumping stations at the end of these canals. Until then, a structure of gates and temporary pumps has been built to protect nearby neighborhoods.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu of New Orleans said at a news conference Saturday that he expected the city’s pump system to function effectively. Of the 120 pumps, 108 were working. “We have plenty enough to deal with the potential rain,’’ he said.
Farther east, in Biloxi, a casino city that lost 6,000 structures in Hurricane Katrina, officials urged residents to prepare for Nate as quickly as possible. The Mississippi Gaming Commission ordered all coastal casinos closed.
Vincent Creel, the public affairs manager in Biloxi, said hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which passed west and east of the area, had served as stark reminders of a hurricane’s havoc.
“It’s been to the left, to the right, and now right to us,’’ Creel said.
