The powerful storm has sustained winds of 150 mph, just 7 mph shy of a Category 5 storm. It is expected to make landfall in Louisiana this afternoon.
When Hurricane Ida makes landfall later today, it will be coming in contact with a different-looking New Orleans.
“This is a different city than it was Aug. 28, 2005, in terms of infrastructure and safety,” Ramsey Green, New Orleans deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure told reporters Saturday at a News Conference ahead of Hurricane Ida’s landfall.
Ida is rapidly intensifying over the Gulf of Mexico and is expected to make landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane on Sunday, the same date Hurricane Katrina made landfall 16 years ago.
Green called the city’s levee system “an unprecedentedly powerful protection for the city,” which has three lines of defense: the coast, the wetlands and the levee system. “I think from that perspective, we need to be comfortable and we need to know that we’ll be in a much better place than we were 16 years ago,” Green said.
Green added: “That said, if we have 10 to 20 inches of rain over an abbreviated period of time, we will see flooding. We don’t know at this moment, we see 15 to 20 inches over 48 hours or less, and we can handle it, depending on the event.”
