with Jennifer Wadsworth | Assistant metro editor
Gas shortages. Empty shelves. Long lines. Bumper-to-bumper traffic. Scenes of nervous anticipation played out throughout the capital region Saturday as Hurricane Ida swirled and strengthened on her widely watched ascent to the Louisiana coastline. Though slightly ahead of schedule and slightly east of course, her trajectory pretty well hewed to forecasts putting landfall at Morgan City and Baton Rouge in the bullseye. For many in Ida's path, dread felt palpable as the cool, quickening winds. It didn't help that she was set to arrive 16 years to the day of Hurricane Katrina, that she morphed into disastrous proportions over a similar stretch of deep warm water and seemed poised to strike with the same wind speed as the costliest storm in the nation's history. And yet, many people managed to shirk the unease — at least enough to stay put. "I ain't going nowhere," one lifelong Morgan City denizen told our reporter Sam Karlin, saying he'd rather brave a hurricane than congested interstates. People interviewed by The Advocate Saturday found reason to hope and cause to fear. Those who weathered bad storms before felt ready to brave another. Those who lost everything once were determined to never go through it again, joining the caravan of cars clogging miles and miles of highway. Storms may be a matter of course for Louisiana, but Ida stands apart from Katrina and other predecessors in a number of ways. For one thing, she's coming in at an angle that'll push more water into Lake Ponchartrain than it's seen in recent memory. She's also relatively smaller than prior Category 3-to-4 storms, which meteorologists say might make her damage more focused and fierce. Ida also appears historic in scale and scope. "We can sum it up by saying this will be one of the strongest hurricanes to hit anywhere in Louisiana since at least the 1850s," Gov. John Bel Edwards told reporters at a news conference late Saturday afternoon. Of course, the threat looms larger now that the state's population has grown alongside industrial corridors. As our reporters Tristan Baurick and Jeff Adelson point out in this story, nearly 600 toxic chemical sites lie in Ida's projected route, making her impact an environmental as much as material concern. What sets Ida apart perhaps more than anything else, however, is her timing. Not because, as already mentioned, she's about to land on the anniversary of Katrina. It's because she's barreling down during the worst wave of a global pandemic — a pandemic whose eye of the storm happens to be in Louisiana. Ida is on a collision course with COVID. Weathered as this state may be when it comes to hurricanes, it's never seen these particular twinned disasters. Novel as this moment may be, some hospital officials told us there's one constant: that is, the constant flux of disaster preparedness. And adapting to new unfolding, unpredictable, seemingly unassailable threats, Ochsner President Warner Thomas said, well, that "we've done before."
Our coverage is developing by the minute, so keep refreshing theadvocate.com for updates. But before you go, take a look at this news to know: - Power outages may last for days, if not weeks
- A parish-by-parish look at Ida's impacts
- How strong is a Cat 4? This video is pretty telling
- What could 15 feet of storm surge mean? "Complete and utter devastation"
Thanks for reading. Stay safe, stay dry. | 
