Hurricane Ida kills one, knocks out power in New Orleans
People in the US Gulf Coast are waking up to damaged homes flooded streets and no electricity after Hurricane either made landfall near New Orleans as a category four storm late on Sunday,
either has since been downgraded to a tropical storm. Forecasters are warning though that the danger isn’t over. More flooding is expected as the storm moves north. Phil that Val is live for us in New Orleans.
So what does the aftermath look like? They’re now
thrown aside some its fans were in New Orleans, you also hear in the French Quarter where we’re on higher ground. It’s not so bad to me, there are tiles of valour and signs of valve as a bit of a mess here, considering there’s a category four hurricane here 12 hours ago, but it’s relatively okay.
And because the temperatures are quite warm, and it’s quite humid, the water like the river that we had yesterday, which was which was a road became a river has now pretty much gone. It’s when you get outside the metropolitan area to those suburban areas that there are real issues.
For example, there’s a place called MFIs, which is about 15 minutes drive or so from Central New Orleans, we are told that there are 200 people trapped, according to the man who says they are in imminent danger. And the big issue that we’ve got as as well as the flooding is the fact that there is no power and this is more than just an inconvenience.
This is a life threatening situation. You know, the power went off nature citywide last night at about so long. So right as the storm hit the worst possible time It was getting dark, nobody could see obviously people can go inside.
And we are told that the power could be off. For weeks, there’s a million plus people without any electricity. They’re calling it a catastrophic, catastrophic transmission failure. That’s the technical term,
although the boss of the power company and says has said the grid is 100% smashed because of downed power lines down telephone lines. The problem is that people are trapped in their homes.
This is Louisiana, it’s summer, it is humid, it is very hot. And people can’t keep their homes cool. There may be people with medical conditions who couldn’t leave, who need to try to keep cool. They can’t, they can’t keep their food secure,
because their food will spoil very quickly in this heat. And we were told, you have to have at least 72 hours worth of food and water. It’s also affecting infrastructure, but pumps, they get rid of the water.
Hurricane Ida New Orleans
Some of those have been affected by the power outage because not everyone has access to generators. That means that some people are without clean running water. It’s also affected hospitals ICU units, which are treating COVID patients remember Louisiana is in the midst of its fourth wave things are really bad here.
And nonsense alone. They couldn’t get any energy. And some businesses do have generators. I mean, you could probably hear a few of them in the background. But then you’ve got people who are relying on their cell phones to communicate with the outside world.
They’ve got no internet because there’s no Wi Fi because there’s no power. So they’re using their phones, they’re telling emergency services where they are because the 911 lines have been down as well, at various points.
They’re using their phones, but the cellular networks are down as well. So their phones will be searching for signals are going to be doing in the hot temperatures. Hot weather. Bad signals are two things that kill batteries very quickly on mobile phones. So they’ve got limited time.
And there are people trapped in these homes. So the only way that people can really be discovered is by driving around if you can get them or buy from the air. So that’s what people are looking for. But for those travellers is a very dangerous situation.