Rescues Begin, Damage Assessed in Louisiana as Hurricane Ida Weakens

Hurricane Ida was downgraded to a tropical storm as its top winds slowed over Mississippi on Monday, while across southeast Louisiana residents waited for daylight to be rescued from floodwaters and to see how much damage was caused by one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to strike the U.S. mainland.

All of New Orleans lost power right around sunset Sunday, leading to an uneasy night of pouring rain and howling winds. The weather died down shortly before dawn, and people began carefully walking around neighborhoods with flashlights, dodging downed light poles, pieces of roofs and branches.

Levees failed or were overtopped in the maze of rivers and bayous south of New Orleans, threatening hundreds of homes. On social media, people posted their addresses and locations — directing search and rescue teams to their attics or rooftops.

Officials promised to start the massive rescue effort as the weather broke and the sun rose.

The torrential rains mostly moved into Mississippi on Monday as the storm slowly moved north. Destructive winds and water already had a catastrophic effect along the southeast coast of Louisiana, and life-threatening river flooding continued well inland, the National Hurricane Center said.

Ida made landfall on the same day that, 16 years earlier, Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi, and its 150 mph winds tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to hit the mainland. It was already blamed for one death, someone hit by a falling tree in Prairieville, La., outside Baton Rouge, deputies with the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office confirmed Sunday.

More than 1 million customers in Louisiana and Mississippi were without power, according to PowerOutage.US, which tracks outages nationwide. The outage increased the residents’ vulnerability to flooding and left them without air-conditioning and refrigeration in sweltering summer heat.

Entergy confirmed that the only power in New Orleans was coming from generators, the city’s Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness tweeted, citing “catastrophic transmission damage.” The city relies on Entergy for backup power for the pumps that send stormwater over the city’s levees. The system is much-improved since Katrina, but Ida is posing its biggest test since that disaster.

The 911 system in Orleans Parish also experienced technical difficulties early Monday. Anyone needing emergency assistance was urged to go to the nearest fire station or approach the nearest officer, the New Orleans Emergency Communications Center tweeted.

Ida finally fell back to being a tropical storm again 16 hours after making landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane. Its top sustained winds were 60 mph early Monday, and forecasters said it would rapidly weaken while still dumping torrential rain over a large area. The storm was centered about 95 miles south-southwest of Jackson, Miss., moving north at 8 mph.

The rising ocean swamped the barrier island of Grand Isle, and roofs on buildings around Port Fourchon, La., blew off as Ida made landfall. The hurricane then churned through the far southern Louisiana wetlands, swirled over the state’s petrochemical corridor and threatened the more than 2 million people living in and around New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

Officials said Ida intensified into an extremely powerful hurricane too quickly over the Gulf of Mexico for officials to organize a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans’ 390,000 residents. Many didn’t have enough gas and hotel money, transportation or other resources needed to flee. Hospitals also had no choice but to hunker down, counting on generators to keep COVID-19 patients and other patients alive.

In Baton Rouge, 27-year-old Robert Owens watched the sky in his neighborhood light up as transformers blew up all around him.

“Never in my life have I encountered something this major,” he said as giant gusts rattled his home’s windows.

Significant flooding in Louisiana was reported late Sunday night in LaPlace near Lake Pontchartrain and in places like Lafitte, where a barge struck a swinging bridge in town.

Gov. John Bel Edwards said rescue crews would not be able to immediately help those who were stranded as the storm raged. He warned his state to brace for potentially weeks of recovery.

“Many, many people are going to be tested in ways that we can only imagine today,” the governor told a news conference Sunday.

But, he added, “there is always light after darkness, and I can assure you we are going to get through this.”