A person on a bicycle passed a damaged Shell station in Kenner, Louisiana, after Hurricane Ida hit land on 23 August 2021.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
Ida has lost some of its strength since landing in Louisiana on Sunday, but the system’s path across the southeast still poses great danger, the National Hurricane Center said in an update Monday after at least one person died in the storm.
Officials downgraded Ida to a tropical storm as it moved inland early Monday, where heavy rains, tornadoes and the potential for severe flooding are expected in parts of the southeast. Rainfall could be 24 inches across parts of southeast Louisiana to the extreme south of Mississippi.
Ida first hit land over Port Fourchon, Louisiana as a Category 4 storm with winds of 250 mph, one of the strongest storms to hit the region since Hurricane Katrina, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.
It’s too early to know the extent of the damage caused by the storm in Louisiana, but search and rescue teams have started deploying across the region. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said on MSNBC that the death toll is likely to rise.
Flooded streets are pictured after Hurricane Ida landed in Louisiana in Kenner, Louisiana on August 30, 2021.
Marco Bello | Reuters
“The daylight will bring terrible pictures when the damage is assessed. More than 20,000 linemen will work to restore the severely damaged power lines, “Edwards communications director Shauna Sanford said early Monday on Twitter.
According to PowerOutage.us, more than 1 million utility customers in Louisiana were without power as of early Monday. More than 850,000 New Orleans customers are still out of power, Entergy’s failure page shows.
A damaged power line is pictured after Hurricane Ida landed in Louisiana in Kenner, Louisiana on August 30, 2021.
Marco Bello | Reuters
Since landing, utility teams have moved in to assess the damage to the city’s electrical grid, a process that Entergy says will likely take days. The restoration of the electrical transmission will “take much longer,” said the company in a tweet.
Because of its path, almost all offshore oil producers in the Gulf have ceased operations. The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement also estimates that approximately 84.87% of natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico has been shut down.
Comments are closed.