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Hurricane Ida pounded Louisiana after sweeping ashore from the Gulf of Mexico, flooding broad areas below heavy surf and torrential rains as fierce winds toppled bushes and energy strains, plunging New Orleans into darkness after dusk, writes Devika Krishna Kumar.
Ida weakened right into a tropical storm over southwestern Mississippi early on Monday (30 August), the Nationwide Hurricane Heart stated, however it’s anticipated to proceed unleashing heavy downpours “prone to lead to life-threatening” flooding.
The complete extent of storm injury remained to be seen at dawn.
Sunday evening (29 August), the sheriff’s workplace in Ascension Parish reported the primary identified US fatality from the storm, a 60-year-old man killed by a tree falling on his residence close to Baton Rouge, the state capital.
Ida, the primary main hurricane to strike the US this yr, made landfall round midday on Sunday as a ferocious 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).
Its arrival got here 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, probably the most catastrophic and lethal U.S. storms on document, struck the Gulf Coast, and a few yr after the final Class 4 hurricane, Laura, battered Louisiana.
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.
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 models.
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 had been moved to a different flooring, the state Well being Division confirmed to Reuters.
Inside 12 hours of landfall, Ida had weakened right into a Class 1 hurricane on the five-level Saffir-Simpson scale, with high winds clocked at 85 mph (135 kph) because the storm pushed about 100 miles inland previous New Orleans, Louisiana’s largest metropolis, early on Monday.
By then, Ida had plowed a damaging path that submerged a lot of the state’s shoreline below a number of ft of surf, with flash flooding reported by the Nationwide Hurricane Heart throughout southeastern Louisiana.
Almost all offshore Gulf oil manufacturing was suspended prematurely of the storm, and main ports alongside the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts had been closed to delivery.
Energy was knocked out Sunday evening to your entire New Orleans metropolitan space following the failure of all eight transmission strains that ship electrical energy to town, the utility firm Entergy Louisiana reported.
One transmission tower collapsed into the Mississippi River, the Jefferson Parish Emergency Administration Division stated.
Greater than 1 million Louisiana properties and companies in all had been with out electrical energy by late Sunday evening, in keeping with the monitoring website Poweroutage.US.
Residents of probably the most weak coastal areas had been ordered to evacuate days forward of the storm. These using 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 constructed following devastating floods in 2005 from Katrina, a hurricane that claimed some 1,800 lives.
“I nearly discovered myself in a panic assault when information introduced this was the anniversary of Katrina,” stated Janet Rucker, a lifelong New Orleans resident who took shelter in a downtown resort together with her canine, Deuce. “That is simply not good for our nerves and our psyche.”
The US Military Corps of Engineers stated the newly bolstered New Orleans levees had been anticipated to carry, although they stated they stated the flood partitions might be overtopped in some locations.
Lots of of miles of latest levees had 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 elements 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.
“We’re as ready as we could be, however we’re anxious about these levees,” stated Kirk Lepine, president of Plaquemines Parish, probably the most weak areas alongside the Gulf Coast.
The parish later issued an alert on Fb urging residents of 1 space to hunt increased floor after studies of an overtopped levee.
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