US: Hurricane Ida claims 1 life, knocks out power in New Orleans
The storm blew roofs off buildings and reversed the flow of the Mississippi River as it rushed from the Louisiana coast into one of the nation’s most important industrial corridors.
FollowNew Orleans: Hurricane Ida made landfall on Sunday and battered the city and Louisiana, to an extent that left nearly a million in darkness as a major life-threatening storm knocked out power, downed trees and caused havoc as the region witnessed one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US.
The hurricane made landfall as a powerful Category 4 storm, which weakened to a Category 2 storm on Sunday night with maximum winds of 105 miles per hour. The storm blew roofs off buildings and reversed the flow of the Mississippi River as it rushed from the Louisiana coast into one of the nation’s most important industrial corridors.
The hurricane was blamed for at least one death. The Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office said on Facebook that deputies responded to a home in Prairieville on a report of someone injured by a fallen tree. The person, who was not identified, was pronounced dead. Prairieville is a suburb of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital city, an AP report stated.
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The power outage in New Orleans heightened the city's vulnerability to flooding and left hundreds of thousands of people without air conditioning and refrigeration in sweltering summer heat, the report further stated.
Residents of the most vulnerable coastal areas were ordered to evacuate days in advance. But those riding out the storm in their homes in New Orleans, less than 100 miles inland to the north, braced for the toughest test yet of major upgrades to a levee system constructed following devastating floods in 2005 from Katrina.
Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden warned that Hurricane Ida will be a major life-threatening storm and promised all the necessary federal assistance to the states that will be affected. Notably, Ida hit the Gulf Coast on the 16th anniversary of the disastrous Hurricane Katrina.
(With inputs from agencies)
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