GAINS AMID PAINS
La. toll hits 15; some juice is back, 430G still in dark
The Louisiana death toll from Hurricane Ida hit 15 Tuesday as the state’s department of health announced two more storm-related fatalities.
“Sadly, LDH can confirm two more storm-related deaths,” the Louisiana Department of Health tweeted. “The St. Tammany Parish coroner has confirmed two deaths that are considered storm-related.”
A 68-year-old man fell off a roof while making repairs, and a 71-year-old man died from lack of oxygen during an extended power outage, the department said.
“This brings our Hurricane Ida death toll to 15 at this time,” the department concluded.
The first death occurred the night of the storm, when a man was killed by a falling tree in Ascension Parish.
After being downgraded to a tropical storm, Ida continued inland, wreaking havoc all the way into New England. In New York City, at least 13 people died, many of them drowning in illegal basement apartments in Queens. All told at least 50 more people died in historic flooding from Virginia to Massachusetts, in addition to Louisiana’s total.
More than 430,000 people remained without power on Tuesday, nine days after Ida slammed into the Louisiana coastline as a Category 4 hurricane, and more than half of the gas stations in two major cities were without fuel, Associated Press reported.
Signs of recovery were apparent, too, with water restored for hundreds of thousands of people who had been without, and AT&T reporting that its wireless network, which was mostly downed during the storm, had been restored.
At its peak the power outages topped a million, including the entire city of New Orleans, and authorities predicted full power might not be restored for weeks.
By Tuesday nearly three-quarters of New Orleans had electricity again, while 98% of the 300,000 residents in the state’s hardest-hit parishes in the southeast still lacked power, AP said.
Estimates were that power probably won’t be widely restored to St. John the Baptist Parish until Sept. 17 and until Sept. 29 to Lafourche, St. Charles and Terrebonne parishes, power company Entergy said Monday.