NEW ORLEANS: At least one person has died and power is out across Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday as officials warned residents against...
NEW ORLEANS: At least one person has died and power is out across Louisiana and Mississippi on Monday as officials warned residents against venturing out on roads littered with downed power lines and debris from Ida, which remains a powerful storm.
Virtually no one in the state has electricity and many water systems are also out, Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said.
Emergency 911 service was also not available in New Orleans in the wake of the powerful Category 4 hurricane that slammed into the state a day earl-ier.
The death toll was likely to increase, Edwards told MSNBC, and he posted on Twitter that the state had deployed 1,600 search-and-rescue personnel.
"Please remain sheltered in place. Although you may be tempted to go explore, conditions are still very dangerous," the City of New Orleans Emergency Medical Services wrote on Twitter.
President Joe Biden declared a major disaster in the state, ordering federal assistance to bolster recovery efforts.
Ida crashed ashore as Louisiana was already reeling from a resurgence of COVID-19 infections that has strained the state's healthcare system, with an estimated 2,450 COVID-19 patients hospitalized statewide, many in intensive care units.
The storm's arrival came 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, one of the most catastrophic and deadly U.S. storms on record, struck the Gulf Coast, and about a year after the last Category 4 hurricane, Laura, battered Louisi-an-a.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) administrator Deanne Criswell said the full impact of the storm would become clear later in the day.
"We're hearing about widespread structural damage," Criswell said in an interview with CNN. "I don't think there could have been a worse path for this storm. It's going to have some significant impacts."
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