Miami – The torrential rains and areas completely flooded by water left by Hurricane Ida for four days in its advance through the United States have claimed the lives of at least twenty people and still leave one million homes without power. most of it in New Orleans, Louisiana.
The Entergy electricity company, which serves New Orleans, acknowledged today that they cannot yet indicate when they will be able to restore electricity for the vast majority of users in this city.
The power cuts continue this Thursday, being massive in New Orleans, with 928,000 homes still without electricity, and with high figures also registered in Mississippi (32,000), in the south of the country.
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The Northeast, where Ida has finally dissipated today, also faces blackouts: Pennsylvania (57,000), New York state (37,000), New Jersey (48,000) and Connecticut (12,000), according to the specialized website Poweroutage.us.
The state of Louisiana will receive this Friday the visit of US President Joe Biden, who will tour the most affected areas and meet with local and state authorities.
Four days after Ida landed on the Louisiana coast, near Port Fourchon, as a fearsome Category 4 hurricane, the trail of destruction persists, with at least 20 deaths due to heavy rainfall that sank bridges, highways and flooded vast populated areas.
Ida has destroyed a large part of the city’s electrical infrastructure since Sunday, including the eight main transmission lines that carry power to the city.
In addition, it caused damage to oil refineries located in Louisiana, with seven of them out of service and hundreds of gas stations that are now closed because of the destructive Ida winds.
Ida destroyed residences, buildings and bridges as it passed through Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane. (The Associated Press)
Homes were flooded by heavy rains from the atmospheric system. (The Associated Press)
Ida made landfall on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which caused 1,800 deaths in 2005. (The Associated Press)
Louisiana residents now face the possibility of going weeks without power. (The Associated Press)
Ida impacted Louisiana as a hurricane for 16 hours before becoming a tropical storm. (The Associated Press)
Boats hit by powerful Ida winds in Lafitte, Louisiana. (The Associated Press)
In the image a destroyed home in the city of Houma, in Louisiana. (The Associated Press)
A barge damages a bridge that divides two Louisiana cities. (The Associated Press)
Ida razed the Louisiana power grid, leaving more than a million people in the dark. (The Associated Press)
The cyclone would have caused at least two deaths in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, in Louisiana. (The Associated Press)
On the other hand, the flood that Ida unloaded this Wednesday and Thursday on its way to the Northeast United States has caused several deaths in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.
It is a flash flood disaster that, in the case of New York, the private weather company AccuWeather calls the “largest in the history of the city.”
The good news is that in New Orleans, Louisiana, where Ida struck as a near Category 5 hurricane, the federally rebuilt levee system withstood the onslaught of waves and tides.
This managed to avoid the repetition of another catastrophic flood similar to the one suffered by this city in 2005 after the Katrina scourge.
That hurricane hit New Orleans with Category 5 (maximum) winds on August 29, 2005 and has been one of the most devastating in the past 30 years, with nearly 2,000 fatalities and $ 108 billion in damage across all locations. United States affected.
