The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Hurricane Ida power outages, misery persist 9 days later across Louisiana
LAPLACE, LA. — Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses in Louisiana, most of them outside New Orleans, still didn’t have power Tuesday and more than half the gas stations in two major cities were without fuel nine days after Hurricane Ida slammed into the state, splintering homes and toppling electric lines.
There were also continuing signs of recovery, however, as the total number of people without electricity has fallen from more than a million at its peak, while hundreds of thousands of people have had their water restored.
State health officials, meanwhile, announced that they are revoking the licenses of seven nursing homes that evacuated to a warehouse where seven residents died amid deteriorating conditions after the hurricane.
The disparity in power restoration between New Orleans, where nearly three-quarters of the city had electricity again, and other communities where almost all residents were still in the dark prompted frustration and finger-pointing.
State Rep. Tanner Magee, the House’s second-ranking Republican, who lives in the devastated city of Houma in Terrebonne Parish, said he’s convinced his region is shortchanged in favor of New Orleans.
“It’s very infuriating to me,” Magee said.
Though water was running again in his area, most hospitals in the region remained shuttered, and the parish was in desperate need of temporary shelter for first responders and others vital to the rebuilding effort, he said.
Warner Thomas, president and CEO of the state’s largest hospital system, Ochsner Health, warned that it would be “some time” before two Ochsner hospitals — one in Terrebonne Parish and the other in Lafourche Parish — fully reopen. Emergency rooms at the two hospitals, however, were operating.
Carnival Cruise Line announced Tuesday that it will keep one of its ships, Carnival Glory, docked in New Orleans through Sept. 18 to serve as housing for first responders.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said while there had been much progress in restoring water and power, “there’s an awful lot of work to be done.”
Without power, the Louisiana heat is the hardest thing to cope with, said Kim Bass, who lives in St. John the Baptist Parish. She and her husband use a generator to keep food cold but lack air conditioning. Water service is intermittent.
“So you may have water one minute, then you may not have water for the next two days,” Bass said.
In many neighborhoods, homes were uninhabitable. State and federal officials said about 3,200 people are in mass shelters around Louisiana, while an additional 25,000 people whose houses have been damaged are staying in hotel rooms through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s transitional sheltering program. FEMA already has approved more than 159,000 household applications for disaster assistance, according to Louisiana’s emergency preparedness office.
Shontrece and Michael Lathers looked on despondently as workers wrestled a billowing blue tarp into place over what was left of the roof of their home in the St. John the Baptist Parish town of Laplace. Ida’s floodwaters had risen to about 3 feet inside their home, and rain that had poured in through the wind-damaged roof obliterated most of the drywall ceilings.
The house will have to be gutted floor to ceiling, Michael Lathers said, adding that he had no idea how much the repairs will cost.
Fuel shortages also persisted across areas of the state. More than 50% of gas stations in New Orleans and Baton Rouge remained without gasoline Tuesday afternoon, according to Gasbuddy.com.