The storm made landfall late on Wednesday afternoon as a powerful category two storm, striking the latest blow of an extraordinarily busy Atlantic tropical storm season. “Guys, we received the brunt of Zeta, and Zeta gave us a good punch,” McInnis told local station WDSU-TV.
Guy McInnis, the president of St Bernard parish, Louisiana, said emergency workers were doing their best to respond to reports of people in distress after their roofs were blown off. Trees blocked lanes on two interstates, the Georgia department of transportation said. Morning rush hour commuters in Atlanta had to dodge downed trees and navigate their way past signals with no power. In Alabama, one person died when a tree fell on a mobile home in rural Clarke county north of Mobile, said Brian Wilkerson, deputy director of the county emergency management office. Richardson and another man exited a floating car and desperately clung to a tree before his strength “just gave out”, Switzer said. In Mississippi, Leslie Richardson, 58, drowned when he was trapped in rising seawater in Biloxi after taking video of the raging storm, the Harrison county coroner, Brian Switzer, said. In Georgia, authorities said a man was killed when high winds caused a tree to fall on to a mobile home in Cherokee county and two people died when a tree fell on their home near Atlanta, pinning them to the bed. Zeta slammed into the storm-weary Gulf coast, pelting the New Orleans metro area with rain and howling winds that ripped apart buildings, knocked out power to thousands and threatened to push up to 9ft of sea water inland in a region already pounded by multiple storms this year.Ī 55-year-old man in Louisiana was electrocuted by a downed power line, a coroner said.
The storm raged onshore on Wednesday afternoon in the small village of Cocodrie in Louisiana as a strong category 2 and then moved swiftly across the New Orleans area and into neighboring Mississippi, bringing with it both fierce winds and storm surge. Officials said life-threatening conditions would last into the day, with Zeta crossing the mid-Atlantic states as a tropical storm before moving offshore around Delaware and southern New Jersey. Zeta weakened over central Alabama but its strong winds continued there and the Florida Panhandle early on Thursday.