Curfew in New Orleans, without power after Hurricane Ida

Published on : 09/01/2021 – 06:15

New Orleans was subject to a curfew Tuesday, August 31, nearly two days after Hurricane Ida hit the coast of Louisiana, exactly sixteen years after Katrina which had claimed more than 1,800 victims.

Four deaths have been confirmed and rescuers have started searching for those isolated by the giant storm. The receding waters begin to reveal the extent of the damage along the US Gulf of Mexico coast. A man is also missing, after being apparently killed by an alligator.

The city’s mayor, LaToya Cantrell, said on Twitter that she had issued an order imposing an overnight curfew on New Orleans, much of which is still without electricity.

Limited damage in town

Images of people pulled from flooded cars and destroyed homes are circulating on social media, but the damage in New Orleans itself has remained limited.

A person was killed by a fall from a tree in Prairieville. A second died while trying to drive in flood waters 95 kilometers southeast of New Orleans, authorities said.

According to outage tracking site PowerOutage.us, Ida has left more than one million properties in Louisiana without power. Electricity was still not restored in most of them Tuesday evening.

Electricity supplier Entergy announced Tuesday morning that electricity could be restored as early as Wednesday, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune. The first to benefit will likely be hospitals, many of which have to cope with an influx of Covid-19 patients, wastewater treatment plants and water treatment centers, the newspaper said.

The toll should grow heavier

In Mississippi, where torrential rains fell, a road collapse left two people dead and ten injured, three of them in critical condition, police said. The death toll is expected to rise further, Louisiana Deputy Governor Billy Nungesser warned Tuesday, especially in coastal areas directly affected by Ida.

President Joe Biden has declared a major disaster for Louisiana and Mississippi, giving states access to federal aid.

Ida, now a tropical depression, moves northeast, threatening the Tennessee and Ohio valleys.

Scientists have warned of an increase in cyclone activity due to the warming of the ocean surface due to climate change, posing a growing threat to coastal communities around the world.

With AFP