Hurricane Ida cuts power to 1m homes in New Orleans
HURRICANE IDA has pounded Louisiana, flooding wide areas, plunging 1million New Orleans homes into darkness and reversing the flow of the Mississippi.
A 60-year-old man killed by a tree falling on his house near Baton Rouge was the first fatality of the hurricane.
It blew in from the Gulf of Mexico with 150mph winds, exactly 16 years after Hurricane Katrina battered the coast, claiming 1,800 lives.
President Joe Biden declared a major disaster in Louisiana, ordering federal assistance to bolster recovery efforts.
Nearly all offshore Gulf oil production had been suspended ahead of the storm and residents of the most vulnerable coastal areas evacuated.
But power to more than 1million homes and businesses in New Orleans was knocked out on Sunday after transmission lines to the city failed. One transmission tower collapsed into the Mississippi, which saw its flow briefly reversed on Sunday as Ida roared in.
Louisiana was already reeling from a second Covid spike that has left around 2,450 in hospital.
A loss of generator power at a hospital near New Orleans forced medics to manually respirate patients while they were being moved elsewhere.
Yesterday, Ida weakened into a tropical storm over south-west Mississippi, the National Hurricane Center said.
But further heavy downpours and ‘lifethreatening’ flooding is expected and levees around New Orleans – upgraded since Katrina – remain at risk.