ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Tropical storm Francine is churning in the western Gulf of Mexico and headed for landfall in Louisiana by Wednesday evening. Forecasters say it will strengthen into a hurricane, fueled by very warm gulf waters. NPR's Debbie Elliott is in New Orleans. Hi, Debbie.
DEBBIE ELLIOTT, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: What's the latest on the path that Francine is likely to take?
ELLIOTT: Well, the National Hurricane Center has it on a track to come ashore in South Louisiana, somewhere between the Texas border and the mouth of the Mississippi River. But this is a pretty wide storm, so it's going to affect a good stretch of the Gulf Coast. Jay Grymes, who's the Louisiana state meteorologist, is urging people to take it very seriously and get ready now.
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JAY GRYMES: Look for tropical-storm-force winds to start making their way along the coast and moving inland by the mid-morning hours. Landfall looks to be during the afternoon or early evening on Wednesday. So tropical-storm-force winds begin tomorrow morning. You need to have everything completed by that time.
ELLIOTT: Now, you know, Ari, any time a hurricane takes aim at Louisiana, people immediately think about Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when the levees broke in New Orleans, swamping the city. Some 1,800 people died across the region in that storm. But Francine won't pack that kind of punch or even the power of the more recent Hurricane Ida, which was a deadly Category 4 storm that hit Louisiana in 2021.
SHAPIRO: Well, that's reassuring. What are people bracing for with Francine?
ELLIOTT: You know, certainly, here in Louisiana, hurricane-force winds that will down trees and knock out power lines - but also water. Remember, South Louisiana is very low, marshy territory. It's not heavily populated, but there are also few roads in and out of some communities. That can cause problems. The National Hurricane Center is also warning of life-threatening storm surge along the Gulf Coast, from Texas all the way to Alabama. On the Louisiana coast, that surge could be as high as 10 feet. Now, that's a big wall of water.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
ELLIOTT: Heavy rains also expected to cause flash flooding, rivers overtopping their banks, isolated tornadoes likely. The flooding will be a threat as Francine moves inland, over Mississippi and points north, in the coming days. The storm has already curtailed oil and natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico by about a quarter, according to the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement - companies, of course, evacuating workers from production platforms and drilling rigs in Francine's path.
SHAPIRO: How are people in Louisiana preparing?
ELLIOTT: You know, the governor has declared a state of emergency. That frees up resources for the response. The National Guard has been deployed to vulnerable parishes with high-water vehicles, boats, helicopters - all the things they need should they have to go into search-and-rescue operations. Locally, several parishes have ordered evacuations of coastal and low-lying areas - certainly people who might be living in RVs or travel - or mobile homes - especially in communities that are outside of the levee protection systems - right? - the kind of systems that protect the city of New Orleans.
And then, around the state, people boarding up, putting sandbags on their property, gathering emergency supplies. In Baton Rouge, Dadrian Ellis was shoveling dirt into sandbags at a local park just to be on the safe side. Ellis told our member station, WRKF, that he's stocked up for whatever may come.
DADRIAN ELLIS: Gas, water, cold cuts.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Cell phone, some light...
ELLIS: (Laughter).
ELLIOTT: Ari, the essentials.
SHAPIRO: Yeah.
ELLIOTT: Got to have cold cuts in a hurricane. But on the serious side, Ellis says he is taking this seriously because his house in North Baton Rouge flooded back in 2016, so he knows what can happen and what can happen fast.
SHAPIRO: NPR's Debbie Elliott in New Orleans - thank you.
ELLIOTT: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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