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New Orleans: A roof covered by "Ida" lies on the street
Photo: DAN ANDERSON / EPA
Flooded streets, covered roofs, hundreds of thousands without electricity: Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards has described the damage in his state from Hurricane Ida as "catastrophic".
The authorities have so far confirmed one fatality.
The reconstruction will take weeks and months, said Edwards on Monday morning (local time) in an interview with the TV station NBC. The rescue and recovery operations started slowly because so many roads are impassable. He firmly assumes that the death toll will rise "significantly" in the course of the day. "The damage is really catastrophic," said Edwards.
"Many still have stagnant water in their homes and need to be rescued," said the governor.
However, it is very gratifying that the flood protection system in New Orleans, which was built after the destruction by Hurricane »Katrina« in 2005, has held up.
"The situation in New Orleans is bad as it is now with no electricity, but it could be so much worse," he said, looking at the protective dams.
He hoped that electricity could be restored "soon," at least in parts of New Orleans, Edwards said.
"Don't come back"
The city urged citizens who had taken shelter elsewhere before the storm not to return yet.
There is no electricity and no basic supply in the city, and many streets are full of rubble, said the city's operations center on Twitter.
In capital letters it said: "Don't come back." Thousands of people from New Orleans, which has a population of around 400,000, are said to have fled the city before the storm.
The hurricane raged for hours with wind speeds of around 200 kilometers per hour, as the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said.
The storm brought back bad memories, as it reached Louisiana exactly 16 years to the day after the devastating hurricane "Katrina" hit, which killed around 1,800 people in and around New Orleans.
The numerous overturned power poles initially posed a particular danger.
In many areas, the emergency call centers were overloaded.
The authorities called on citizens to boil their tap water before drinking because of flooding.
The head of the US civil protection agency Fema, Deanne Criswell, told CNN in the morning that there were reports of buildings that may have collapsed and that a number of hospitals were running on emergency generators.
"Ida" not only hit land as an "extremely dangerous hurricane" of level four, but also remained such a storm for hours.
"Monster Storm"
Some media called "Ida" a "monster storm" because, according to meteorologists, the strength of its gusts had doubled in an "explosive" way within 24 hours.
As the night wore on, the hurricane subsided and the National Hurricane Center downgraded it to a tropical storm.
"Ida" moved as a tropical storm in a northeasterly direction over Louisiana on Monday and was supposed to reach the neighboring state of Mississippi in the afternoon.
Photos and videos in local media showed houses that were underwater in the coastal areas, streets that swelled into rivers, covered houses and numerous uprooted trees and broken electricity pylons.
For safety reasons, the important oil production in the region has also been partially shut down.
In the town of Galliano, the storm tore off parts of the roof of a hospital.
But nobody was injured.
“We've seen floods and storms before.
But I've never seen so much water, ”Tim Kerner, the mayor of Jean Lafitte told CNN.
"Ida" completely devastated his community.
Since a vehicle swept away by the water destroyed a bridge, 200 to 300 residents were stuck.
Louisiana's Governor Edwards activated the National Guard with around 5,000 soldiers and mobilized hundreds of salvage experts.
In addition, thousands of workers were ready to restore the power supply.
Low-lying areas southwest of the city of New Orleans, for which evacuation orders had previously been issued, were particularly hard hit.
The first reports of serious damage also came from the small town of Houma further north with around 30,000 inhabitants, which was directly in the path of the storm.
Man killed by tree
In the Prairieville community, a person was fatally injured by a falling tree, the local sheriff's office announced on Facebook on Sunday evening. It is said to be a 60-year-old, reports media. The place is located southeast of Baton Rouge, the capital of Louisiana. In addition, more than a million customers in the state and in neighboring Mississippi were without electricity, according to data from the poweroutage.us website.
The power also failed in the entire city of New Orleans, as the operations center announced.
"The only electricity in town comes from generators," they said.
Most of the approximately 400,000 residents of New Orleans had to make do with candles, flashlights or gas lamps - or to endure in the dark.
There was no good news from the responsible electricity company Entergy: The hurricane damaged all eight lines responsible for supplying electricity to the city.
President Joe Biden declared Louisiana a disaster as the state requested.
ptz / dpa
