Storm Ida: Second person dies as a million face weeks without power in aftermath of hurricane
Follow here for the latest updates after weather system makes landfall at Port Fourchon
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Your support makes all the difference.Hurricane Ida, the fifth-strongest to ever hit the mainland United States, has finally been downgraded to a tropical storm after spending 16 hours churning across Louisiana in what Joe Biden declared a “major disaster”.
Two people were confirmed dead in the storm’s aftermath, with the death toll expected to rise “considerably”.
Intensifying faster than experts had predicted, the weather system blasted into New Orleans exactly 16 years to the day after the devastating Hurricane Katrina, where it knocked power out across the city, tore off roofs and even reversed the flow of the Mississippi River.
Residents of the Gulf Coast evacuated their homes and businesses were shut down as much of the Louisiana coastline was plunged underwater. The hurricane claimed at least one life, after a tree fell onto a residential property in Baton Rouge.
Louisiana’s governor John Bel Edwards lamented that, “if you had to draw up the worst possible path for a hurricane in Louisiana, it would be something very, very close to what we’re seeing”, warning residents of his state to brace for potentially weeks of recovery.
It was declared a tropical storm on Monday by the National Hurricane Centre, which warned that dangerous storm surges, damaging winds, and flash flooding would continue over portions of southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi.
Louis Armstrong ‘second home’ destroyed by Ida in New Orleans
The New Orleans jazz landmark known for being a second home to Louis Armstrong was destroyed by Hurricane Ida. The Karnofsky Tailor Shop building, just a few blocks from the French Quarter, was reduced to rubble in the storm.
The South Rampart Street building had seen better days by the time it became a pile of bricks. It stood empty surrounded by vacant lots for years. In the 1920s, however, it’s where a young Armstrong learned spent most of his days with the Jewish immigrant family, who loaned him money to buy his first instrument.
“This is one of the most important remaining jazz history sites in the city. Been neglected for a long time. This is a tragedy in a city that’s done a terrible job at preserving its most important contribution to American (and world) culture,” said Advocate journalist Gordon Russell.
Second person dies in Hurricane Ida as death toll to rise ‘considerably’
The death toll from Hurricane Ida has risen to two, according to the Louisiana Department of Health.
The Louisiana Department of Health said Monday that a man drowned after "his vehicle attempted to go through floodwater" in New Orleans. The man's age and name have not been released.
The department said the man drowned in his vehicle after attempting to drive through floodwater near I-10 and West End Blvd.
“The coroner does consider this death to be storm-related,” they said in a statement.
It follows a 60-year-old man from Ascension Parish who was killed when a tree fell onto his home.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said earlier on Monday that he expects the number of dead to rise “considerably”.
“I don't want to mislead anyone. Robust search and rescue is happening right now and I fully expect that death count will go up considerably throughout the day," he told MSNBC.
Thousands could be left without power for weeks as crews assess widespread damages
Restoring power to thousands of homes in New Orleans and surrounding parishes could take days or even weeks, after Hurricane Ida slammed into southeast Louisiana and knocked out all eight electricity transmission lines powering the region, including a critical tower that collapsed near the Mississippi River.
More than 1.1m homes and businesses are without power, according to Governor John Bel Edwards, after the storm’s “catastrophic damage” broke down more than 2,000 miles of power lines and 216 substations, according to Entergy, the company that powers much of the state.
Entergy New Orleans, which provides the city with electrical and gas power, announced that it would “likely take days to determine the extent of damage to our power grid and far longer to restore electrical transmission to the region”.
More than 20,000 lineman from 22 states have been dispatched across the state, though it remains unclear how long it will take to restore service, potentially leaving thousands of homes in the dark and in the late-summer heat and humidity.
Alex Woodward reports.
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