Hurricane season starts Saturday, and local officials seem to share a common fear: storms that rapidly intensify -- going from a storm residents think they can ride out, to one capable of causing serious destruction.
"We need to plan for rapidly intensifying storms," said New Orleans Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Director Collin Arnold.
"We can go from a Category 1, and everybody's saying, 'oh, it's a Category 1, we're just going to stay down, let's go to the grocery, get some water, we're going to stay home,' and then it rapidly intensifies to where we should have left," said Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng. "It leaves everyone unprepared."
It ties into another worry: people who think they don't need to evacuate until authorities set up contra-flow, reversing lanes of the I-10, I-55, and I-59 to add more capacity to out-bound highways.
"Do not wait for contra-flow," cautions Joe Valiente, Arnold's counterpart in Jefferson Parish. "Contra-flow was designed as a mechanism of last resort."
Arnold said when Hurricane Ida formed in 2021, it was already more than 20 hours too late to begin the contra-flow process.
"Ida didn't exist at H-minus-72," said Arnold, referring to the 72-hour lead time it takes for state officials in Louisiana and Mississippi to prepare the highways. "So when we're finally able to actually see this is going to be a major hurricane projected to hit New Orleans, we were at 50, maybe? 40?"
It is why leaders throughout metro New Orleans are urging residents to be ready to hit the road, even if a mandatory evacuation isn't ordered.
