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The Latest: New Orleans could be without power for weeks

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’ office says parishes that urged its residents to evacuate are encouraging people to stay away in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Ida

Via AP news wire
Monday 30 August 2021 18:02 BST
Tropical Weather-Atlantic
Tropical Weather-Atlantic

The Latest on Hurricane Ida (all times local):

12 p.m.

New Orleans residents faced a massive cleanup effort and possibly weeks without power. Whole toppled trees blocked streets, pulled down power lines, covered yards and damaged homes.

With power likely to be out for weeks, John Pope said he would survive without electricity -- with help from neighbors who have a generator -- until a scheduled trip out of town next week.

Ehab Meselhe, a professor in Tulane’s engineering school, planned to head out of town once he and his wife finished cleaning up the tree branches and limbs littering their yard. “I have another house in Lafayette,” he said. “Once power is back, we’ll come back.”

A few blocks away, Hank Fanberg stuffed hurricane debris into a garbage back as generators roared on either side of his lightly damaged house. He said neighbors on both sides have generators and they have both already offered, "so we’re going to be in good shape in terms of some electricity.”

Sitting on a screened porch while listening to a battery-operated radio and feeding her one-year-old daughter, Pamela Mitchell wasn’t sure what she would do. She had already spent a hot and frightening night at home while Ida’s winds shrieked. She was thinking about trying to leave. But her 14-year-old daughter, Michelle, was determined to stay, preparing to clean out the refrigerator and put perishables in an ice chest. “We went a week before -- with Zeta,” she said, recalling the hurricane that hit the city last fall. “So, we’ll be all right.”

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HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HURRICANE IDA:

Rescuers set out in hundreds of boats and helicopters to reach people trapped by floodwaters and utility crews mobilized after a furious Hurricane Ida swamped the Louisiana coast and made a shambles of the electrical grid in the sticky, late-summer heat.

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Read more:

— As Ida leaves Gulf, analysts foresee modest economic damage

— No cash or gas to run from Ida: ‘We can’t afford to leave’

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HERE'S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

BATON ROUGE, La. — Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’ office says parishes that urged its residents to evacuate are encouraging people to stay away in the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Ida because it remains unsafe to return amid downed power lines, flooded homes, snapped trees and other destruction.

The New Orleans suburb of Jefferson Parish, for example, was estimating it could take at least five days to restore the water system there. That's according to Edwards spokesperson Christina Stephens.

“The best advice is to stay put where you are” if you evacuated, Stephens said. “People who have evacuated out of the state should stay where they are right now.”

With widespread AT&T cell service outages, many people were frantically trying to reach loved ones and were unsuccessful. But Stephens said people shouldn’t return from their evacuation points to try and check on family and friends. Just because you can’t get through by phone, “that does not necessarily mean that they are not OK,” Stephens said. “We know that much of this is a communications problem.”

Stephens said AT&T hasn’t yet provided the governor’s office with any estimates of when cell service will be restored.

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11:45 a.m.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards’ office says power company crews were doing a damage assessment of its power grid, but that it appeared the damage was “catastrophic.”

Officials were estimating Monday that it could be weeks for full restoration in some areas.

Christina Stephens, a spokesperson for the governor, said search and rescue was underway across many communities in southeast Louisiana, with particular high water problems in Lafitte, LaPlace, the west bank of Jefferson Parish and the Houma/Thibodaux areas.

The state had more than 1,000 people conducting search and rescue operations, and many more local search and rescue operations were up and running as well.

Stephens said only one death has been confirmed from Ida, but she cautioned that based on the widespread destruction: “We’re going to have many more confirmed fatalities.”

The governor also tweeted that Ida “packed a very powerful punch” and “did everything that was advertised, unfortunately.”

He wrote that levies in hard-hit areas “performed extremely well” for the most part, but that much of the state remains without power, water systems were out and “we have tremendous damage to homes and businesses.”

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11:25 a.m.

Power company officials say a giant tower that helps carry key overhead transmission lines over the Mississippi River to the New Orleans area withstood the force of Hurricane Katrina, but was destroyed by Ida.

As of Monday morning, there were more than 888,000 power outages in Louisiana, with outages expected to increase as the storm moves through Mississippi.

More than 2,000 miles of transmission lines were out of service Monday, along with 216 substations, according to the power provider, Entergy.

Entergy said crews were assessing damage to help the company “get a better idea of what we’re dealing with.”

“It would be premature to speculate at this time when power will be restored given the extent of the damage,” the company said.

Entergy has more than 11,000 workers ready to restore service, and expects that number to increase to 20,000, it said. The company is booking hotel rooms and preparing to move mobile sleeping units to house the thousands of workers in areas hard-hit by the storm. ___

11:15 a.m.

The U.S. Department of Energy says 96% of oil production and 94% of natural gas production in the Gulf of Mexico are shut down due to Ida.

Nearly 300 maned oil platforms and drilling rigs were shut down and evacuated. At least nine oil refineries in the region have also been shuttered, representing 13% of the nation’s total refining capacity.

Several pipelines are also shut down as a precaution.

The service disruptions are not expected to immediately impact the availability of gasoline nationally, due to ample fuel reserves in the system, the department said.

The ports of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Gramercy, and Morgan City in Louisiana and the Port of Pascagoula, Mississippi are all closed. The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port has also suspended operations.

Authorities were also calculating just how much wind and rain Ida unleashed. Preliminary measurements on Monday showed a high of 15.7 inches of rain from Ida dropped in Slidell, Louisiana, through 9 a.m. local time.

New Orleans got nearly 14 inches of rain. From 5 to 11 inches of rain fell in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

A ship in the port at Port Fourchon measured 172 mph winds, while Venice, Louisiana, recorded a high of 128 mph winds.

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