Photo: A mother makes dinner for her child as Ida rages
First Hurricane Ida-related death confirmed
The first death attributed to Hurricane Ida was confirmed Sunday evening by officials in Ascension Parish.
The victim was a 60-year-old man who had a tree fall in his home, the Louisiana Department of Health tweeted.
Just after 8:30 p.m., deputies with the Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office received reports of a fallen tree on a home in Prairieville, Louisiana, according to the sheriff's office's Facebook page. When they arrived on the scene, deputies found a deceased victim.
Prairieville is about 66 miles northwest of New Orleans. News of the first fatality comes as the storm causes widespread power outages and flooding.
Gulf Coast hospitals brace for Ida, most near capacity with Covid patients
Photos: Firefighters cut through trees as Ida rages in Louisiana
Boil water advisory issued in Jefferson Parish
Residents in a southeastern Louisiana parish were told Sunday to boil their water after Hurricane Ida slammed into the state as a devastating Category 4 storm.
The advisory, from Jefferson Parish, was issued for the area’s East Bank. A loss of pressure in the distribution’s system was to blame, the parish said.
The order came amid widespread power outages across southeastern Louisiana, including the entire city of New Orleans.
All of New Orleans loses power due to 'catastrophic transmission damage'
All of New Orleans has lost power, the city's utility provider said Sunday evening, hours after Hurricane Ida slammed into Louisiana.
In a tweet Sunday at 8:27 p.m. ET, NOLA Ready, the city of New Orleans' emergency preparedness campaign, shared that Entergy New Orleans had confirmed that New Orleans had no electricity, and that the city's only power was coming from generators.
The loss of power was due to "catastrophic transmission damage" from the storm, according to Entergy.
It was not immediately clear how the mass outage was affecting local hospitals.
As Hurricane Ida barreled toward the Gulf Coast, some residents chose to 'stay and pray'
As Hurricane Ida rapidly intensified into a Category 4 storm threatening the Gulf Coast, residents of the area faced a difficult decision — to stay and ride out the storm, or to brave the clogged highways and hastily evacuate.
Ida made landfall in southeast Louisiana early Sunday afternoon with 150 mph sustained winds as authorities warned of "catastrophic" damage that could threaten all homes and people in its path.
Hurricane warnings are all too familiar to Gulf Coast residents who have lived through countless storms, but the severity of this one took some by surprise, leaving little time to prepare.
On Friday evening, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards warned that Hurricane Ida was "changing, it seems, by the hour."
"Now is the time to finish your preparations," Bel Edwards said. "By nightfall tomorrow night, you need to be where you intend to ride out the storm and you need to be postured as you would want to be as the storm approaches you."
Six hours changed New Orleans' preparation
On Friday evening Mayor LaToya Cantrell warned New Orleanians that Hurricane Ida had unexpectedly strengthened and moved “more rapidly than anyone was prepared for.”
It was too late to order an evacuation, she said, or to call for the major interstates to reverse all lanes in the directions out of the city — a tactic called contraflow that leaders in Louisiana use to quickly evacuate populated areas when dealing with a dangerous hurricane or other major emergency.
“Time is not on our side,” she said in that day's second press conference. “The city cannot issue a mandatory evacuation because we don’t have the time.”
While some locals criticized the delayed evacuation order, other storm-seasoned residents as well as scientists defended the mayor and said Hurricane Ida’s speed and power were alarming and difficult to predict.
Hurricane Ida made landfall Sunday in southern Louisiana as a ferocious Category 4 storm, tearing roofs from a hospital and homes, flooding roads and sending ferries adrift.
There were no immediate reports of fatal injuries or estimates of property damage, but officials urged residents to stay put until the storm passed.
Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng told reporters earlier Sunday that the only road into Grand Isle, a barrier island south of New Orleans that is home to less 1,000 people, was under six feet of water. The local fire station was flooded, she said, and a few dozen people appeared to have disregarded a mandatory evacuation order.
“The conditions are very, very bad,” she said. “They are really getting beaten up right now.”