Isaac nears New Orleans on Katrina anniversary

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Hurricane Isaac was beginning to move inland on Wednesday on a slow, drenching slog toward New Orleans - seven years to the day after the much stronger Katrina hit the city.

Isaac's approach left deserted streets from New Orleans' famous French Quarter to Tampa 770 kilometers away, where Republicans at their party's national convention pressed on with only a passing mention of the storm's arrival.

The US National Hurricane Center in Miami said Isaac remained a Category 1 storm with top sustained winds of 128 km per hour, but was expected to weaken over the next 48 hours as it heads north over land. Isaac's center was forecast to pass over Louisiana for two days and head into Arkansas to the west early on Friday.

Isaac's winds and sheets of rain were whipping through nearly empty streets in New Orleans, while in neighboring Mississippi, the storm pushed Gulf water over sections of the main beachfront highway that runs the length of the state's shore.

Ryan Bernie, a spokesman for the city of New Orleans, said the storm had caused only some minor street flooding before dawn and felled trees but had left roughly 125,000 customers in the city without power.

Isaac came ashore on Tuesday night near the mouth of the Mississippi River, then went nearly stationary for several hours over the sparsely populated neck of land that stretches into the Gulf of Mexico. It was headed for New Orleans, 112 km to the northwest, on the seventh anniversary of Katrina.

While much less powerful than Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005, the storm drew intense scrutiny because of its timing on the anniversary.

About the broadcaster:

Nelly Min is an editor at China Daily with more than 10 years of experience as a newspaper editor and photographer. She has worked at major newspapers in the U.S., including the Los Angeles Times and the Detroit Free Press. She is also fluent in Korean.