AT LEAST 46 DEAD FROM IDA’S FURY
Storm leaves path of devastation from Gulf to N. England
Cleanup continued Thursday after Hurricane Ida’s trail of death and destruction devastated a large swath of the country, from New Orleans to New York and New England.
At least 46 deaths were blamed on the monster system, which brought fierce winds to the Gulf Coast beginning Sunday and doused the Northeast with a deadly deluge on Wednesday.
Ida barreled into Louisiana on Sunday — the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina — as a brutal Category 4 hurricane with wind speeds up to 150 mph. It dumped torrential rains across the state and knocked out power for the entire city of New Orleans before weakening to a Category 2 storm and moving up the Gulf Coast, downgrading into a tropical storm as it marched northeastward and then dissipating into a depression.
But even in its weakened state, Ida brought more death to the Big Apple than the Big Easy, thanks to Biblical-like tempest. The soaking arrived in New York on Wednesday night, killing at least 13 people, including a young boy and an 86-yearold woman.
As the storm continued into New England, a Connecticut state trooper was killed when floodwaters overtook his cruiser early Thursday morning.
Cleanup and rescue efforts were hampered by power outages.
Most of New Orleans remained without electricity Thursday, with officials predicting that the outages could last a week or longer. Before dawn, juice was restored to parts of the city’s business district and other downtown neighborhoods as well as several hospitals in Jefferson Parish and near Baton Rouge.
Most homes remained in the dark, with 95% of residences across seven parishes without power.
Only 35,000 of the 405,000 homes and businesses in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish had their power restored by Thursday afternoon, according to the poweroutage.us website.
Statewide, 917,000 customers were without electricity, down from about 1.1 million at the peak of the storm.
“I’m very mindful that it’s a start, and only a start,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said of the people who got their power back.
Some parts of Louisiana were also under a heat advisory on Thursday, leaving those without power little relief from the sweltering temperatures.
A search was also still underway for Timothy Satterlee, a 71-year-old man whose arm was ripped off while being attacked by an alligator in Hurricane Ida’s floodwaters. Crews with a cadaver dog have combed through the New Orleans suburb of Slidell, where the incident occurred, to no avail.
Other storm-related deaths include two 19-year-old Pike Electric employees killed while attempting to restore power just outside of Birmingham, Ala.
Investigators were still trying to determine exactly how they died.
A flash-flood warning remained in effect Thursday for most of New England, where authorities have been forced to use boats to carry out rescue efforts.
First responders plucked 18 people from a flooded neighborhood in Plainville, Conn., and another 15 people — including one who uses a wheelchair — from a complex in North Kingstown, R.I.
In Maryland, authorities pulled 10 children and a driver from a school bus swept up in rising floodwaters in Frederick County. The county’s school superintendent apologized for not dismissing students earlier, The Frederick News-Post reported.
The storm has also halted roughly 90% of oil and gas production in the area as the storm approached. That’s expected to boost the price of gasoline in coming weeks, analysts said.
The Atlantic hurricane season is far from over. Larry intensified into a hurricane Thursday morning and was forecast to rapidly strengthen into a catastrophic Category 4 storm by Sunday. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said it’s moving west but remains far from any coast.