Hotels host hurricane evacuees
Although the cleanup efforts from Hurricane Ida are just getting underway, hotel workers in the Pine Bluff area say many of their guests from the battered Louisiana coast left by Wednesday to return home despite urging from authorities to stay away.
Some guests, they say, reported that power was restored, while others were believed to be moving into more affordable hotel rooms as they await federal assistance.
At the Holiday Inn Express and Suites in White Hall, manager on duty Ericka Reams said all 79 rooms there were booked before Wednesday afternoon, adding a power company reserved 35 of them. It was not clear whether the rooms were reserved for Louisiana residents escaping Ida.
“People are still coming from Louisiana, and people are trying to find housing until the storm passes,” Reams said.
One guest from the Louisiana area, Reams said, indicated she was staying for an indefinite period of time. The guest declined to be interviewed.
The last time the White Hall location was close to full, Reams said, was when residents of coastal and east Texas escaped Tropical Storm Imelda in September 2019. The hotel opened in 2018, she said.
“If we get full, we just tell [interested guests] we don’t have anything else and we just refer them to other properties to house them,” she said.
Reams said she expected more guests from the Louisiana coast Wednesday night as the previous reservations from the power company freed up.
An assistant manager at Comfort Inn and Suites on Camden Road said she had availability Wednesday afternoon after a majority of guests earlier in the week came from the greater New Orleans area.
“Many of them thought that their FEMA claims would be processed, but they had to leave because they were still waiting on those. Some of them said they did have lights at their homes. Some of them are going back to their families, and some parts of Louisiana didn’t get hit as bad as others.”
— Lajoyia Bell, assistant manager at Comfort Inn and Suites on Camden Road
“Many of them thought that their FEMA claims would be processed, but they had to leave because they were still waiting on those,” Lajoyia Bell said. “Some of them said they did have lights at their homes. Some of them are going back to their families, and some parts of Louisiana didn’t get hit as bad as others.”
Workers at hotels near the Saracen Casino Resort and former Pines mall also said some of their rooms were available by Wednesday after being booked up earlier in the week. Some workers said they weren’t familiar enough with the guests to refer them for comment about their evacuations.
Hurricane Ida arrived at Port Fourchon, La., as a Category 4 storm with 155 mph winds, according to a news release from the office of Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards. It has drawn comparisons to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and Hurricane Laura, which slammed into both southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana in 2020. NBCNews.com reported the death toll from Ida rose to 6 by early Wednesday.
Entergy Louisiana reported 772,099 of its customers were without power just before 7 p.m. Wednesday, with a majority of the outages in areas surrounding Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Eight major transmission lines that deliver power into southeast Louisiana went out of service, the company said, but crews brought one transmission source back online to power the greater New Orleans area.
“Despite the significant logistical challenges and accessibility issues in some of the hardest hit areas, our team has been able to assess about 36% of the impacted infrastructure and has identified 2,095 broken poles, 422 damaged transformers, and 2,351 downed spans of wire statewide,” Entergy Louisiana said in a statement. “Assessments will continue over the next few days but that may be extended for more extensively damaged areas in the state.”