Sharjah24 - WAM: Hurricane Francine came ashore in southern Louisiana on Wednesday, pounding New Orleans with heavy rains and gusty winds while threatening the wider Gulf Coast with a potentially deadly storm surge that led to evacuation orders for thousands of people, Reuters reported.
Francine packed maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kph) after the eye of the storm travelled inland over southern Louisiana and was about 50 miles (80 km) west-southwest of New Orleans, the US National Hurricane Centre said.
The hurricane centre briefly upgraded the storm from Category 1 to Category 2 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale just before it made landfall. Even as a Category 1 storm, its very dangerous winds are capable of producing damage, and the whole of the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Mississippi was under a warning for storm surge that the hurricane centre called life-threatening.
More than 200,000 homes and businesses throughout Louisiana had lost electricity, according to PowerOutage.us.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry and US President Joe Biden each declared a state of emergency in anticipation of the storm, freeing up emergency management resources and potential financial aid in the event of serious damage.
Nearly 39% of oil and almost half of natural gas production in the US Gulf of Mexico was offline on Wednesday, according to the offshore regulator. A total of 171 production platforms and three rigs had been evacuated.
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