Dozens of rescue missions were launched across southern Louisiana on Monday to evacuate people stranded in their homes after Hurricane Ida battered the coast and knocked out power to virtually all of New Orleans before cutting a dangerous path north.
The powerful weather system, which weakened to a tropical storm, was one of the strongest hurricanes ever to make landfall in the region and killed at least one person outside of Baton Rouge. Major search and rescue operations to answer the hundreds of rescue calls have been hampered by inoperable 911 lines and poor cellphone service reported throughout southeastern Louisiana, including the heavily populated Orleans and Jefferson parishes.
The Louisiana National Guard activated 4,900 Guard personnel and was positioned to dispatch nearly 200 high-water vehicles and more than 70 rescue boats and 30 helicopters to aid in the search efforts. By Monday afternoon, 191 people and 27 pets had been rescued after crews checked 400 homes, Gov. John Bel Edwards told reporters.
Speaking earlier to NBC's "TODAY" show, he said the damage was catastrophic and that officials believe the death toll could rise "considerably."
The latest on Ida:
Edwards expressed some relief in that Louisiana's $14 billion levee system appeared to have held up "extremely well" against Ida. The sophisticated system was designed to protect a 133-mile perimeter around the New Orleans metro area from intense flooding.
"It didn't overtop. There was no failure. The situation in New Orleans, as bad it was today without the power, would be so much worse," Edwards said, hinting at the devastation that Hurricane Katrina brought in 2005 and prompted improvements and extensive investment to the levees in the years since.
"This storm packed a very powerful punch. It delivered the surge that was forecasted, the wind that was forecasted and the rain," the governor added, estimating that recovery from Ida will take months.
Electric utilities reported that more than 1 million homes and businesses were without power in Louisiana and another 110,000 in Mississippi. Entergy New Orleans, the main power utility in the city, with nearly 200,000 customers, said all of New Orleans lost electricity early Sunday evening because of "catastrophic damage" to its transmission system.
The company tweeted Monday that it "will likely take days to determine the extent of damage to our power grid in metro New Orleans and far longer to restore electrical transmission to the region."
Another 329,000 people throughout the region remained under boil water notices, Edwards said.
The National Hurricane Center said that the rain and storm surge "resulted in catastrophic impacts along the southeast coast of Louisiana." It warned of dangerous storm surges and flash floods around southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi after Ida made landfall as a Category 4 storm with howling 150 mph winds on the same day that Hurricane Katrina struck 16 years earlier.
At least one person, a 60-year-old man, died in Ascension Parish after a tree fell on his home, authorities said.
Now crawling across southern Mississippi, Ida had sustained winds of around 40 mph as of 2 p.m. ET. The hurricane center warned that gusts and heavy rainfall could still cause damage as the storm continues to move farther inland, and storm surge warnings were in effect for the Alabama-Florida border with tornadoes possible Monday in the region, including in southeast Mississippi.
The hurricane's high winds ripped roofs from buildings in New Orleans, scattered debris across the famed French Quarter, toppled large trees and brought on flooding in Grand Isle, Louisiana. In St. Rose, in greater New Orleans, video posted on social media showed two large boats colliding.
In St. John Parish, west of New Orleans along the east bank of the Mississippi River, people used social media to report residents trapped in attics as the floodwaters climbed.
"I know that we're not in it by ourselves, and it's going to be OK," Tiffany Miller, a LaPlace resident who retreated to her attic, told NBC affiliate WDSU overnight Monday as she estimated that 3 to 5 feet of water had inundated her subdivision.
Edwards said that homes in St. John Parish have been damaged to the point that they're uninhabitable.
Early Monday, officials were preparing to survey the damage as the sun came up and teams got ready to head out to check on those who called for rescue throughout the night. Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng told "TODAY" that around 250 calls for rescue came in overnight.
"We are ending what was a terrifying night for many individuals waiting for their rescue," she said. "Today is the day we are going to see the damage."
Levees in the Lafitte area were reported to have been topped, but did not have structural damage, she added.
Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said that more damage than initially predicted is likely.
"This is going to be a really long recovery," she said on early Monday on MSNBC.
New Orleans' sewer and water board said the power loss could affect a "very significant" number of its 84 sewer pumping stations. The board said that it had obtained backup generators for some, but that "in order to prevent sewage backups, we have asked residents to limit water usage at home, thus decreasing the amount of wastewater we must remove."
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Ida made landfall over Port Fourchon, Louisiana, at about 11:55 a.m. CT (12:55 p.m. ET) as the storm moved into the mouth of the Mississippi River, the hurricane center said.
Authorities in Lafourche Parish reported extensive destruction on Monday to buildings, including its two hospitals.
Lady of the Sea General Hospital had "significant damage," including to its roof and its phone system was down, but "all patients and staff are fine at this time without injury," hospital CEO Karen Collins said in a message through Facebook.
Thibodaux Regional Medical Center said a partial generator failed, but it continued to have power and was working with the state health department.
Both hospitals had been treating patients with Covid-19 as the highly contagious delta variant has created a fourth surge of the coronavirus in Louisiana, primarily among the unvaccinated.
Patients in other hospitals across the state were being evacuated ahead of the storm, and officials said they would assess the potential damage Monday.
At landfall, Ida's winds were just short of 157 mph, the level considered a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane wind scale, which rates storms from 1 to 5 based on maximum sustained wind speed. Only four storms have made landfall in the continental U.S. as Category 5 hurricanes in the last century: the Labor Day Hurricane in 1935, Camille in 1969, Andrew in 1992 and Michael in 2018.
President Joe Biden approved Louisiana's disaster declaration on Sunday night, freeing federal aid for people and governments in the affected areas.
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