Hurricane Ida knocked out power to the entire city of New Orleans
ASSOCIATED PRESS - Hurricane Ida knocked out power to the entire city of New Orleans, hours after blasting ashore as one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the U.S., New Orleans government officials said.
The city’s Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness said on Twitter that energy company Entergy confirmed that New Orleans has no power, and that the only power in the city was coming from generators. The message included a screen shot that cited “catastrophic transmission damage” for the power failure.
The National Weather Service said Ida, which came ashore as a powerful Category 4 hurricane, had weakened to a Category 3 storm with top sustained winds of up to 115 mph (193 kph) as its eye moved west of the city.
Ida made landfall earlier in the day in Louisiana with even stronger winds of 150 mph (240 kph), blowing off roofs and inundating coastal communities with a powerful storm surge. It came ashore on the same date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Hurricane Ida blasted ashore Sunday as one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the U.S., blowing off roofs and reversing the flow of the Mississippi River as it rushed from the Louisiana coast toward New Orleans and one of the nation’s most important industrial corridors.
The Category 4 storm hit on the same date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier, coming ashore about 45 miles (72 kilometers) west of where Category 3 Katrina first struck land. Ida’s 150-mph (230 kph) winds tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever hit the mainland U.S. It dropped hours later to a Category 3 storm with maximum winds of 120 mph (193 kph) as it crawled inland, its eye 25 miles (40 kilometers) west-southwest of New Orleans.
