New Orleans braced for Isaac

Tropical storm Isaac strengthened into a hurricane just off the US Gulf Coast as it churned toward landfall in the New Orleans area seven years to the day after the city was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

Brandishing automatic assault rifles to ward off any threat of looting, the troops in military vehicles took up positions on mostly deserted streets.

Their arrival came as driving rain and stiff winds began battering the city’s iconic French Quarter and its boarded-up storefronts.

The winds, rain and storm surge could pose a major test of New Orleans’s new flood control systems and reinforced levees.

The US Army Corps of Engineers yesterday began to close for the first time the new floodgate on the largest storm-surge barrier in the world, at Lake Borgne, east of New Orleans.

In other preparations, energy companies evacuated offshore oil rigs and shut down US Gulf Coast refineries as the storm threatened to batter the oil refining belt.

Shell Oil shut in several key crude pipelines and terminals and was in the process of an orderly shutdown at two other plants.

Isaac was not forecast to strengthen beyond a Category 1 hurricane, the lowest on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. Its top projected winds were about 80mph. While that would be well below the intensity of Katrina, which was a Category 3 storm, the size of Isaac’s slow-moving system had forecasters predicting widespread flooding.

President Barack Obama added his concerns in a statement from the White House, saying: “We’re dealing with a big storm and there could be significant flooding and other damage across a large area.

“Now is not the time to tempt fate,” he added, saying people should heed warnings and evacuate if instructed by authorities to do so.

Many residents said they were staying put. “We’re staying here for the duration,” said Joe Locascio, 53, as he filled cans of gasoline for his generator at a local gas station.

Locascio added that he and his family had evacuated for Katrina but this storm didn’t look as severe. “If it was a Category 2 or 3, we’d be out of here,” he said.

New Orleans still struggles to recover from Hurricane Katrina, which swept across it seven years ago to the day — August 29, 2005 — killing more than 1,800 people and causing billions of dollars of damage.

After Katrina, the Corps of Engineers built a $14.5bn defence flood system of walls, floodgates, levees and pumps designed to protect the city against a massive tidal surge

The floodgate being closed is 26 feet high and 1.8 miles long. It was designed to prevent the Inner Harbor Navigation Canal from breaching its walls, as it did in 2005.

— Reuters