Closed captioning of: State of emergency ahead of storm in New Orleans
>>>
good evening. just a week after
hurricane irene
came ashore on the
atlantic coast
, another massive storm is brewing this time in the
gulf of mexico
.
tropical storm lee
is not packing
high winds
or pushing a dangerous
storm surge
. what it is bringing is rain. lots of rain. and days of rain. enough rain that new
orleans
rez residents are wondering if all the money put into
flood protection
after
katrina
will keep them safe.
>> reporter:
another rain squall blowing through the
french quarter
. take a look at what we're looking at tonight, it's the 12th storm of the season, there's your satellite radar composite. plenty of
heavy rain
, but the storm is kind of lopsided. most of the rain is on the
east side
. only
2 miles
an hour to the north. so there's going to be a stretch of very
heavy rain
across parts of the
gulf coast
. it's been raining here in mississippi since yesterday. governors have announced some states of emergency, seven counties in mississippi, the entire
state of louisiana
. residents here went through
katrina
, so they take tropical weather very seriously. they are prepping, even as we roll through this afternoon, there's been some sandbagging, but it hasn't been a serious storm prep because really this is not a wind situation, or a
storm surge
situation, this is just a situation where we have to deal with very
heavy rain
. in fact
mitch landrieu
in new
orleans
has urged residents to open
storm drains
and catch basins.
>>
the
city of new orleans
is acting as quickly as possible.
>> reporter:
in the wake of
katrina
, they spent $14 billion shoring up the
flood protection
system, this includes repairs to the floodgates, the levees and also making sure they have got strong enough floodgates to stop the
storm surge
from
lake pontchartrain
. here's that forecast going over the next couple of days and we're talking about a lot of rain as it jogs toward the coast, as it's expected to make landfall sometime on sunday, on average, six to ten inches. and this will cause flooding. but because down here on the
gulf coast
it's flat and we do have sandy soil, we're not going to see anything like that we have seen in the past week following
hurricane irene
.
>>
it sure looks like new
orleans
is going to be put to the test. thanks.
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