Because of the warm Gulf of Mexico seas, Hurricane Ida has gotten stronger, leading over 50,000 to escape coastal areas, while US President Joe Biden has promised aid in helping states bounce back after the disaster.

Forecasters believe that on Sunday, Ida will make landfall in the United States as a Category 4 hurricane that is likely to devastate the Louisiana coast with extremely damaging gusts, strong downpours, and a rise in sea levels.

Ida, with top speeds of 169 km/h, was bearing down on the Louisiana coast on Saturday, following a path that the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said was approximately 386 km south of the mouth of the Mississippi River.

“We're worried about the major change in a short time frame,” Jim Foerster, chief meteorologist at DTN, said. DTN, which supplies meteorological information to oil and transportation businesses, makes this known.

Due to the hurricane's strength, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) predicts that 3 to 4.5 meters of water may flood the Mississippi River's mouth, while lower levels may spread along the Mississippi and Alabama beaches.

There was mayhem, as officials pushed residents and tourists to evacuate low-lying and coastal areas by blocking roadways and causing some gas stations to run out of fuel.

‘The specter of an abandoned village.'

Speaking from his Lafayette, Louisiana, home, Andre LeBlanc, a sportfishing skipper, described how Fourchon was a ghost town after leaving it at 8 p.m. the previous night. “We were the last to leave.”

To compensate for the projected power outages, utility companies increased the size of their workforces and brought in more machinery. According to Foerster, hundreds of thousands of houses would go dark when Ida's wind blows as far east as Mobile, Alabama, carrying past Louisiana.

To deal with the storm, 500 federal emergency workers were dispatched, said Biden on Saturday.

Biden declared at a FEMA briefing that aid workers have “closely coordinated with the electric utilities to restore power as soon as possible”.

Governor John Bel Edwards of Louisiana, whose state is still dealing with a public health disaster that has been sparked by the fourth outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, remarked that Ida's winds will be rough.

Edwards held a press conference to say, “We are dealing with a serious problem.” “It's one of the strongest hurricanes in decades to hit Louisiana.”