ATLANTA — As Hurricane Marco barreled toward Louisiana as a Category 1 storm, officials urged residents on Sunday to seek higher ground and make sure they were stocked up on food and supplies. They were repeating a message that is part of a predictable summer routine on the Gulf Coast as hurricane season reaches its climax.
But this time, there was added urgency: Another storm, one predicted to be even more powerful, is expected to pummel the same stretch of the coast not even 48 hours later.
“You need to be prepared to ride out the storms, you and your family, wherever you are at dark tonight,” Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana told residents during a briefing on Sunday, warning that they might be sheltering in place for as long as 72 hours. The looming second storm, Laura, he added, could ground search and rescue teams and delay efforts to restore electricity.
Even for a region familiar with the dangers of hurricanes and the rhythms of responding to them, the threat of tandem storms stirred a heightened sense of alarm. It is so rare of an occurrence that meteorologists strained to find more than a couple of comparable instances over the past century.
Mr. Edwards, a Democrat who has presided over storm responses during five hurricane seasons as governor, described the situation as “a challenge that, quite frankly, we’ve not seen before.” Other hurricane veterans said it underscored the surprises that come each season. “Hurricanes are unpredictable, no matter how much science we have,” said Richard Zuschlag, the chief executive of Acadian Ambulance based in Lafayette, which is in the paths of both storms.
The storms have already killed at least four people, according to The Associated Press, and caused devastation in Haiti and the Dominican Republic as it pounded islands in the Caribbean.
Forecasters said that Marco is expected to hit southeast Louisiana early Monday as a Category 1 hurricane and then diminish in strength as it scrapes the Louisiana coast and heads into East Texas. Then, meteorologists said, Laura is expected to make landfall as a Category 2 storm near the Texas-Louisiana border, with the center of the hurricane arriving early Thursday. (Laura is forecast to become a hurricane late Tuesday.)
Mandatory evacuations have been ordered in some coastal communities in Louisiana, as the authorities have implored residents in low-lying areas to get out of harm’s way.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas joined Louisiana officials in declaring a state of emergency on Sunday for 23 counties. He cautioned that state officials were preparing for the possibility of Laura strengthening into a Category 3 storm.
Meteorologists said that there was potential for storm surges along the banks of the Mississippi River in the range of three to six feet from Marco, and that Laura could bring a surge of seven to 10 feet along the coast.
Both storms are forecast to drench parts of Louisiana with five to 10 inches of rain.
“We have a one-two punch that’s going to hit the state of Louisiana,” Benjamin Schott, the meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service in New Orleans, said on Sunday.
There are no known cases of two hurricanes in the Gulf at the same time, according to the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The closest occurrence of this was on Sept. 4, 1933, when a hurricane was over South Florida and another was over the western Gulf of Mexico. The last time a hurricane and a tropical storm were both in the Gulf of Mexico was in 1959, Joel Cline, a tropical program coordinator for the National Weather Service, said on Saturday.
Many feared the storms merging into each other, forming a single monster storm. Meteorologists have dispelled that theory, which had gained some traction on social media. Still, Mr. Schott said on Sunday that there was the potential for bands of the storm to overlap in some places, unleashing one to two feet of rain.
Some areas of Louisiana have issued mandatory evacuations, including portions of Plaquemines Parish, Lafourche Parish and Jefferson Parish, near New Orleans, which have remote, low-lying areas that dot the coast in the southeast corner of the state. In Iberia Parish, on the central Louisiana coast, the local authorities beseeched residents living in low-lying areas prone to flooding and near bayous, lakes and drainage structures to evacuate.
“Residents who choose to remain behind may find themselves without power and unable to leave the area due to possible floodwaters and storm debris,” the parish president, M. Larry Richard, said in a statement.
In Lafayette, on the central Louisiana coast, the storms come as the community has been gripped by inflamed racial tension and unrest after the police fatally shot a 31-year-old Black man on Friday.
The man, Trayford Pellerin, was shot by officers responding to a call of a person with a knife at a convenience store, Louisiana State Police officials said in a statement. The authorities said that Mr. Pellerin ran from officers, who failed to stop him with Tasers. The officers opened fire, the state police said, as Mr. Pellerin, who still carried the knife, tried to go into another store.
A protest on Saturday near the store where Mr. Pellerin was killed escalated into tense confrontations between demonstrators and the police, who fired tear gas to break up the crowds.
“While the incident has drawn significant media attention and protests, our personnel won’t be distracted,” said Josh Guillory, the mayor-president of Lafayette, adding, “As twin tropical storms close in on our community, our frontline professionals in law enforcement, health care and emergency response remain focused on keeping our city and parish safe.”
But activists were pushing ahead with their demonstrations, with plans to gather outside City Hall on Sunday evening.
“All citizens who stand for justice, we want you to come out,” Marja Broussard, the president of the local N.A.A.C.P. chapter, told reporters late Saturday.
The storms also come as officials negotiate the coronavirus pandemic, which has been especially punishing for Louisiana. The state had been one of the early hot spots for the virus in the spring and is still among the hardest hit, with more than 143,000 cases and 4,746 deaths, and the pandemic has had a debilitating impact on the economy.
Some residents posted on social media that they did not have the means to flee the storm. Others are choosing to hunker down, as they try to balance fears of the storms against the threat of the virus.
“They’re really trying to have everybody stay at home,” Mr. Zuschlag said, adding that many nursing homes served by his ambulance operation were planning on following that. “All of them want to shelter in place,” he added. “None of them are thinking they are going to leave.”
Yet he had well over 200 ambulances on standby across the region, with more available. After decades in business, he said he knew he needed to be nimble.
“I think we’ve done enough of these storms,” Mr. Zuschlag said. “There’s always going to be something new that happened that we never dreamed could happen.”
Rick Rojas reported from Atlanta, and Christina Morales from Miami. Rebecca Halleck contributed reporting from New York.
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