Ida loses punch, levees hold, but Louisiana expects more rain and flooding

Article content material

NEW ORLEANS — Ida misplaced a few of its punch over southwestern Mississippi on Monday after making landfall in Louisiana as one of the vital highly effective hurricanes to hit the area, nevertheless it may nonetheless set off heavy flooding, the Nationwide Hurricane Middle stated.

Ida, the primary main hurricane to strike the US this 12 months, made landfall round midday on Sunday as a Class 4 storm over Port Fourchon, a hub of the Gulf’s offshore oil business, packing sustained winds of as much as 150 miles per hour (240 km per hour).

Article content material

Though weakened to a tropical storm, heavy downpours may carry life-threatening flooding, the NHC stated.

Federal Emergency Administration Company (FEMA) administrator Deanne Criswell stated the complete affect of the storm would change into clear later within the day.

“We’re listening to about widespread structural harm,” Criswell stated in an interview with CNN. “I don’t assume there may have been a worse path for this storm. It’s going to have some important impacts.”

Federal levees put in to cut back the chance of flooding appeared to have held, in accordance with preliminary reviews.

“Daylight will carry horrific pictures because the harm is assessed. Greater than 20,000 linemen will work to revive the deeply broken energy strains,” Shauna Sanford, communications director for Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards wrote in a tweet.

Article content material

“The excellent news: no federal levee failed or was overtopped.”

Kevin Lepine, president of Plaquemines Parish, residence to 23,000 residents and considered one of Louisiana’s southern most communities, stated he had had little sleep in a single day as he braced for first gentle and the possibility to go and assess the harm.

“We’re fearful concerning the levees down the highway,” he stated.

On Sunday evening, the sheriff’s workplace in Ascension Parish reported the primary recognized U.S. fatality from the storm, a 60-year-old man killed by a tree falling on his residence close to Baton Rouge, the state capital.

President Joe Biden declared a serious catastrophe within the state, ordering federal help to bolster restoration efforts in additional than two dozen storm-stricken parishes.

Article content material

Ida crashed ashore as Louisiana was already reeling from a resurgence of COVID-19 infections that has strained the state’s healthcare system, with an estimated 2,450 COVID-19 sufferers hospitalized statewide, many in intensive care items.

Its arrival got here 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, one of the vital catastrophic and lethal U.S. storms on report, struck the Gulf Coast, and a couple of 12 months after the final Class 4 hurricane, Laura, battered Louisiana.

A lack of generator energy on the Thibodaux Regional Well being System hospital in Lafourche Parish, southwest of New Orleans, pressured medical staff to manually help respirator sufferers with respiratory whereas they have been moved to a different flooring, the state Well being Division confirmed to Reuters.

Article content material

Inside 12 hours of landfall, Ida had plowed a damaging path that submerged a lot of the state’s shoreline underneath a number of ft of surf, with flash flooding reported by the Nationwide Hurricane Middle throughout southeastern Louisiana.

Practically all offshore Gulf oil manufacturing was suspended prematurely of the storm, and main ports alongside the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts have been closed to transport.

WIDESPREAD OUTAGES

Energy was knocked out Sunday evening to the whole New Orleans metropolitan space following the failure of all eight transmission strains that ship electrical energy to the town, the utility firm Entergy Louisiana reported.

One transmission tower collapsed into the Mississippi River, the Jefferson Parish Emergency Administration Division stated.

Article content material

Greater than 1 million Louisiana properties and companies in all have been with out electrical energy early on Monday, in addition to some 120,000 in Mississippi, in accordance with the monitoring website Poweroutage.US.

Residents of essentially the most susceptible coastal areas have been ordered to evacuate days forward of the storm. These driving out the storm of their properties in New Orleans braced for the hardest take a look at but of main upgrades to a levee system https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-orleans-levees-got-145-billion-upgrade-will-they-hold-2021-08-30 constructed following devastating floods in 2005 from Katrina, a hurricane that claimed some 1,800 lives.

The U.S. Military Corps of Engineers stated the newly bolstered New Orleans levees have been anticipated to carry, although they stated they stated the flood partitions might be overtopped in some locations.

Article content material

Lots of of miles of latest levees have been constructed round New Orleans after flooding from Katrina inundated a lot of the low-lying metropolis, particularly traditionally Black neighborhoods.

Inundation from Ida’s storm surge – excessive surf pushed by the hurricane’s winds – was reported to be exceeding predicted ranges of 6 ft (1.8 m) alongside components of the coast. Movies posted on social media confirmed storm surge flooding had reworked sections of Freeway 90 alongside the Louisiana and Mississippi coast right into a uneven river. (Reporting by Devika Krishna Kumar in New Orleans; Further reporting by Jessica Resnick-Ault and Jonathan Allen in New York, Erwin Seba in Houston, Wealthy McKay in Atlanta, Laura Sanicola, Linda So and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington, Liz Hampton in Denver, and Arpan Varghese, Kanishka Singh, Bhargav Acharya and Nakul Iyer in Bengaluru; Writing by Steve Gorman and Maria Caspani; Modifying by Richard Pullin and Nick Macfie)