Ida Wanes To Tropical Storm; U.S. Gulf Coast Braces

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A man watches the waves crash in the resort area of Cancun, Mexico, on Sunday as Hurricane Ida moves over the Caribbean.

Israel Leal/AP

A man watches the waves crash in the resort area of Cancun, Mexico, on Sunday as Hurricane Ida moves over the Caribbean.

What's left of Hurricane Ida, now a tropical storm, still packed a punch Monday as it headed for the Gulf Coast, where Florida, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana declared states of emergency as they braced for landfall.

The storm system lost steam as it hit cooler waters in the northern Gulf. It was expected to hold together long enough to bring high winds and up to eight inches of rain when it comes ashore somewhere between Alabama and the Florida Panhandle Tuesday morning.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Ida's top sustained winds had decreased to nearly 70 mph, from about 90 mph earlier Monday.

Hurricane warnings along the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to the Florida Panhandle were replaced with tropical storm warnings Monday morning in an area where strong bands of rain and wind are expected. There were no immediate plans for mandatory evacuations, but authorities in some coastal areas were opening shelters and encouraging people near the water or in mobile homes to leave.

In Louisiana, nearly 1,400 residents are still living in federally issued trailers and mobile homes after hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck in 2005; nearly 360 units remain in Mississippi.

"FEMA stresses that those in temporary [housing] units should not take chances," Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman Andrew Thomas said. "Leave the unit behind and evacuate to a permanent structure that will better withstand tropical weather systems and the associated winds."

But no one expected Ida to be anywhere near as destructive of those storms or Hurricanes Gustav or Ike in 2008.

"We don't expect this to be anything like what we experienced last year," Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said at a news conference Monday. He said flooding of near the coast is expected and damage from high winds is possible, but the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was confident its levees could handle the high water.

The Coast Guard on Monday dispatched a helicopter to rescue two crewmen from an oil rig located about 80 miles south of New Orleans after the platform suffered damage in the high winds and seas. The crewmen called for a rescue after a boat moored to the rig broke free and damaged part of the rig. They feared the platform could collapse.

"If it were any later we may not have been able to perform the rescue" because of the storm's intensity, said Lt. Marc Lanore, a pilot at Air Station New Orleans, who flew the helicopter during the rescue mission.

In Florida, residents of Pensacola Beach and nearby Perdido Key were encouraged to leave, and school was canceled in the area Monday and Tuesday. Some schools around New Orleans also canceled classes for Monday.

Mississippi authorities warned residents to be vigilant. Authorities were monitoring conditions to see whether any evacuations of lower-lying areas or school closures would be necessary.

Many residents along the Gulf Coast were taking the storm in stride.

"Even though we're telling everybody to be prepared, my gut tells me it probably won't be that bad," said Steve Arndt, director of Bay Point Marina Co. in Panama City, Fla.

Ida triggered flooding and landslides in El Salvador that killed 134 people. One mudslide covered the town of Verapaz, about 30 miles outside the capital, San Salvador, before dawn Sunday.

From NPR staff and wire reports