NEW ORLEANS – Hurricane Ida blasted ashore on Sunday as one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the United States (US), knocking out power to all of New Orleans, blowing roofs off buildings, and reversing the flow of the Mississippi River as it rushed from the Louisiana coast into one of the nation’s most important industrial corridors.
The hurricane was blamed for at least one death: a person found dead following a report of a fallen tree on a home in Prairieville, a suburb of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s capital city.
The power outage in New Orleans heightened the city’s vulnerability to flooding and left hundreds of thousands of people without air conditioning and refrigeration in the sweltering summer heat.
Ida – a Category 4 storm – hit on the same date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier. Ida’s 230 kilometers per hour (kph) winds tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever hit the mainland US.(AP)
