Ida Batters Louisiana, Leaving New Orleans Without Power

Hurricane Ida made landfall on Sunday and battered this city and much of southeast Louisiana, knocking out power, downing trees and causing havoc as the region’s most severe storm since Hurricane Katrina exactly 16 years earlier.

Ida arrived at Port Fourchon, 60 miles south of New Orleans, at midday. It was a Category 4 hurricane, the second-highest storm classification. It brought pounding rain, sustained winds of 150 miles an hour and dangerous sea surges.

All of New Orleans had lost power by Sunday night, an Entergy spokesman confirmed. More than 1 million customers statewide were without power, according to data from poweroutage.us. Earlier in the day, the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans advised people not to run dishwashers or washing machines to minimize wastewater because sewage pump stations had been knocked out by power outages.

The first death from the storm was reported by the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office, which said deputies responded Sunday night to reports of a person injured from a fallen tree and arrived to find the victim deceased.

Storm trackers said that even after several hours, the hurricane remained as strong as when it made landfall, though by early Monday morning it was downgraded, first to Category 1, then to a tropical storm.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said there were roughly 1,500 people in 23 shelters, and those numbers were expected to increase as people discovered that their homes were no longer habitable. He advised residents to abide by curfews set by parishes and to stay off roads. He said this would be one of the strongest storms the state has experienced since at least the 1850s.

“There is no doubt that the coming days and weeks are going to be extremely difficult for our state,” Gov. Edwards said at an afternoon press conference. “Many people are going to be tested in ways that we can only imagine today.”