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Article snippet: NEW ORLEANS — Laurent Paige, 66, waved to his neighbor on Friday from his front-porch swing in the Broadmoor neighborhood of this city. “I’m ready — I got my life jacket,” he hollered, pantomiming some swim strokes. New Orleans residents like Mr. Paige were keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Nate, the latest system of this busy Atlantic hurricane season. It strengthened into a hurricane on Friday night and could hit the Gulf Coast late Saturday or early Sunday. While forecasters believe that the brunt of the storm will slide east of New Orleans, Mr. Paige was taking no chances and stockpiled bottled water, batteries and ready-to-eat food. And yet: “I really don’t think that this storm, Nate, is anything to be scared of,” he said with the confidence of someone who has endured more than six decades of hurricane seasons. What did worry him, though, was the water that will fall and accumulate — and might not move for a while. In the past, New Orleans residents feared that the levees that protected the city would give way, and much of the city was flooded when the levees did just that in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina. Now concerns have shifted to the city’s antiquated and hobbled interior-drainage system, which has been plagued by breakdowns. With the city relying on a network of century-old pumps, the malfunctions have left it vulnerable to flooding from even ordinary rainstorms. Now the system may have to reckon with a hurricane. The authorities in Central America hav... Link to the full article to read more