Hurricane Ida news - live: Death toll rises as Louisiana residents could be left without power for weeks

A young dolphin was rescued from a canal yesterday and released back into the sea after it was displaced by Hurricane Ida.

The mammal was pushed into the canal by the hurricane in Slidell, Louisiana.

The Slidell Police Department released the footage of the rescue, and said officers had help from the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other various agencies.

President Joe Biden declared that a major disaster exists in New Jersey and ordered funds for the areas affected by remnants of Hurricane Ida.

Funding will be made available to affected individuals in counties Bergen, Gloucester, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Passaic, and Somerset.

Assistance can include grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, and other schemes to help individuals and business owners recover from the effects of the disaster.

Some of areas in Louisiana hit hardest by Hurricane Ida could be left without power for more than three weeks.

Utility company Entergy Louisiana said that the areas that might not have electricity until 29 September include the parishes of Lafourche, Plaquemines with the exception of Belle Chasse, St Charles, Terrebonne and part of Jefferson.

On Sunday afternoon, one week after the hurricane made landfall on the Gulf Coast, more than 598,000 customers were without power in Louisiana, according to PowerOutage.us.

Entergy Louisiana, which provides electric service to more than a million customers, estimated that power will be restored to the vast majority by Wednesday.

The number of customers without power at midday Saturday was 718,559, which includes homes and businesses that equate “a lot more” people, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said at a news conference.

At the peak, about 1.1 million customers were without power immediately after the hurricane ripped through the state.

Divers at the site of an ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have identified the source as a pipeline displaced from a trench on the ocean floor and sheared in half by Hurricane Ida. 

Talos Energy, the Houston-based company currently paying for the cleanup, said in a statement issued on Sunday night that the broken one-foot diameter pipeline does not belong to them. 

The company said it is working with the US Coast Guard and other state and federal agencies to identify the owner of the pipeline. 

The Associated Press first reported on Wednesday that aerial photos showed a miles-long brown and black oil slick spreading about 2 miles south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana. 

Talos said the rate of oil spewing from the undersea pipe had slowed dramatically in the last 48 hours and no new heavy black crude had been seen in the last day.

Two response vessels remain on location at the spill attempting to contain and recover oil from the water’s surface. 

Several older residents in New Orleans were trapped inside their homes leading to the death of many.

Hundreds were rescued from eight apartment buildings for older people by the New Orleans Health Department workers on Saturday.

Officials said that five people had died across the eight buildings in New Orleans.

Dr Jennifer Avegno, who leads the New Orleans Health Department was quoted by the New York Times as saying: “I am deeply concerned to have seen the conditions of these private apartment facilities where some of our most elderly and vulnerable community members reside.”

She added that this was a “failure of these facility operators to adequately prepare and protect their residents.”

President Joe Biden and several other Democrats are trying to push for aggressive climate provisions in a sweeping $3.5 trillion budget bill.

Sixty-five people across the country have been killed in the floods, with most of the deaths in New Jersey, New York and Louisiana.

Joe Manchin, Democrat from West Virginia on Thursday had urged party leaders to “pause” their consideration of a massive $3.5 trillion spending bill.

And reports said that Democrats are aiming to approve the measure, which would invest in climate policy and social programs.

Mr Biden, meanwhile, had also said that “the past few days of Hurricane Ida and the wildfires in the West and the unprecedented flash floods in New York and New Jersey is yet another reminder that these extreme storms in the climate crisis are here.”

He added: “We need to be much better prepared.”

The United States Coast Guard has said that clean-up crews are responding to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following Hurricane Ida and a team of divers is set to descend underwater to locate the source of the leak.

Lieutenant John Edwards, the spokesperson for the US Coast Guard, said that the Clean Gulf Associates — a nonprofit oil-spill response cooperative — has placed a containment boom in the area to prevent the further spread of oil.

Only about 42 gallons of oil has been removed so far.

The spill, which is ongoing, appears to be coming from a source underwater at an offshore drilling lease about three kilometres south of Port Fourchon in Louisiana.

The spill appears to have remained out to sea and has not affected the Louisiana shoreline.

At least two Indian-origin people died during flash floods triggered by Hurricane Ida in New Jersey, local reports have confirmed.

According to the Press Trust of India, Malathi Kanche, 46, a software designer and Danush Reddy, 31, were swept away by flash floods caused by Hurricane Ida.

Kanche was with her 15-year-old daughter on Wednesday when her vehicle halted in waist-deep floodwater near Bridgewater in New Jersey. She and her daughter held onto a tree as floodwaters pulled them but the tree fell, “pulling Kanche in the torrent,” a family friend was quoted as saying.

Kanche was earlier put on the list of ‘missing persons’ and the police confirmed her death on Friday.

Reddy was stranded in the flood in South Plainfield, New Jersey and fell near a 36-inch-wide sewer pipe after losing his balance.

Reddy’s body was pulled into the drain pipe and was later found miles away, officials said.

Hurricane Ida’s death toll continued to rise in the northeastern United States while authorities in Louisiana are working to restore power to hundreds of thousands of people.

Reuters reported that the latest death toll in Louisiana rose to at least 13 on Sunday and on the East Coast, the storm killed at least 50 more people, according to the updated numbers.

New York Governor Kathy Kochul said that Ida’s record-breaking rainfall of 3.1 inches per hour on Wednesday, recorded in New York City’s Central Park, “sent walls of water cascading through businesses, public transportation systems and 1,200 homes, causing more than $50 million in damage.”

Meanwhile, Louisiana continues to grapple with power grid failure leaving hundreds of thousands without electricity.

Good morning and welcome to The Independent’s coverage of Ida.