La. residents still reeling days after storm’s wrath
Some flights resume, electricity back on in parts of New Orleans
NEW ORLEANS — Commercial flights resumed in New Orleans and power returned to parts of the business district Thursday, four days after Hurricane Ida slammed into the Gulf Coast, but electricity, drinking water and fuel remained scarce across much of a sweltering Louisiana.
New Orleans fared better than many other places because it was protected from catastrophic flooding by the levee system that was revamped after Hurricane Katrina. The power was back on before dawn in parts of the city’s business district and other downtown neighborhoods. Utility crews also restored electricity to several hospitals in Jefferson Parish and near Baton Rouge, officials said.
Some streets were cleared of fallen trees and debris, and a few corner stores reopened.
The city’s main airport reopened to commercial flights for the first time since the hurricane. Delta was first airline to return, to be followed Friday by United Airlines and later by other carriers, officials said.
The overwhelming majority of homes were still dark.
In seven parishes, at least 95% of customers remained without power Thursday. Only 35,000 of the 405,000 homes and businesses in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish had power Thursday morning, according to the poweroutage.us website. Statewide, 917,000 customers were without electricity, down from about 1.1 million at the height of the seventh named storm to hit Louisiana since the summer of 2020.
“This isn’t our first rodeo, but it’s our worst rodeo,” said Kirt LeBouef as he wiped away tears while looking at the damage to the Little Eagle restaurant in Golden Meadow, a 75-mile drive down the narrow highway from New Orleans toward the Gulf.
LeBouef’s family has owned the crawfish restaurant since 1920.
Power should be restored to most customers around Baton Rouge area by Sept. 8. after workers finish assessing damage, Entergy Louisiana President Philip May said Thursday. Damage assessments are not as far along in the harder-hit regions, so Entergy said it has no timetable for getting service to those areas, which include New Orleans.
In addition to the power outages, the storm tore apart water systems At least 600,000 customers had no running water. Hundreds of thousands of other homes and business were being told to boil their water before using it.
Gasoline shortages were also a problem for people trying to run generators and waiting in drive-thru lines for food and water. The lines for gas stretched for blocks in many places from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.
Ida knocked out Port Fourchon, the primary hub to support drilling at offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and send that oil on its way to refineries. Port leaders said the damage to structures where the eye came ashore was not as bad as feared.
“The majority of them are
still good, and we can get things back up and running,” said Chett Chiasson, executive director for the Greater Lafourche Port Commission, who did not give an exact estimate on reopening the facilities.
President Joe Biden was scheduled to visit Louisiana on Friday to survey the damage from Ida, which hit Sunday with 150 mph winds and was tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to strike the mainland U.S.
At least 10 deaths were blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, including two 19-year-old Pike Electric employees electrocuted Tuesday as they were restoring power near Birmingham, Alabama.
Officials on Thursday classified the deaths of three Louisiana nursing home residents as storm-related.
Outside New Orleans, neighborhoods remained flooded and residents were
still reeling.
More than 1,200 people walked through some of Ida’s hardest-hit communities to look for people needing help, according to the Louisiana fire marshal’s office.
Lafourche Parish President Archie Chaisson said 25% of the homes in his parish of 100,00 people were gone or had catastrophic damage, and up to 40% more had severe damage from winds that blew at over 100 mph for 12 hours.