Hurricane Ida made landfall Sunday as one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the United States, knocking out power throughout New Orleans, blowing the roofs off buildings and reversing the flow of the Mississippi River, which was rushing from the Louisiana coast into one of the country’s most important industrial corridors.
Ida knocks out power to entire city of New Orleans, officials say
The Category 4 storm struck on the same date that Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier, making landfall about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of where Category 3 Katrina first made landfall.
Ida’s 230 km/h winds made it the fifth most powerful hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States. Hours later, it was downgraded to a Category 3 with maximum winds of 193 km/h as it crawled inland, with its eye 30 miles west of New Orleans.
The rising ocean flooded the barrier island of Grand Isle as it made landfall just to the west at Port Fourchon. Ida made a second landfall about two hours later near Galliano.
The hurricane battered the wetlands of extreme southern Louisiana, with more than 2 million people living in and around New Orleans and Baton Rouge under threat.
“This is going to be much stronger than we’re used to seeing and, frankly, if I had to plot the worst possible path for a hurricane in Louisiana, it would be something very, very similar to what we’re seeing,” Gov.
John Bel Edwards told The Associated Press.
Louisianans woke up to a monster storm after Ida’s maximum winds increased by 72 kph (45 mph) in five hours as the hurricane moved through some of the world’s warmest ocean waters in the northern Gulf of Mexico.
The entire city of New Orleans was without power Sunday night, according to city officials. The city’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness said on Twitter that energy company Entergy confirmed that the only power in the city was coming from generators. The message included a screenshot citing “catastrophic transmission damage” from the power failure.
