NEW ORLEANS – Hurricane Ida packed a punch, making landfall Sunday on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina as a Category 4 hurricane with 150 mph winds.
And now that Ida has passed through Louisiana, weakening to a tropical depression as rain and gusty wind spread inland, we are seeing the catastrophic damage she left behind.
A brick building in New Orleans’ business district crumbled to pieces, collapsing onto a parked car. Residents say it had been a historic music store at one point.
“I just came and walked from across the street and this is what I visualize, my car,” the vehicle’s owner Krystal Stedman said. “It’s gone.”
Luckily, nobody was hurt in that damage.
Separately, an awning was ripped from a brewery in the French Quarter.
The destruction across the city is widespread, and officials warned it could be weeks before power is fully restored.
“You know, it was really bad,” said Emilio Perelta, a resident of the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans. “I mean, I’ve been here for 21 years and this felt different.”
Perelta stayed at a hotel to ride out the storm, but even there, he said he was worried for his safety.
“You felt the building shaking,” he said. “It was really, really strong.”
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While flooding was expected, it was the high winds that caused much of the damage seen on the ground.
One person was reported dead in Ascension Parish, about an hour from New Orleans, after a tree fell on a home.
For visitors like Donna Adderly, who came to New Orleans to celebrate her birthday, this was not the weekend she expected. She was staying in a Marriott along Canal Street when the winds picked up and the lights went out.
“The winds got really heavy, started pushing back, and then it just got really dark and then all the power went out,” she said.
Power crews arrived from across the country early Monday to work on an electrical grid left in shambles, and first responders are working on cleanup and rebuilding efforts.
President Joe Biden said more than 5,000 members of the National Guard have been activated, and he approved a state of emergency declaration in Lousiana, ordering federal assistance to help restore power to more than 1 million homes.
Lineman Codey Hale and his crew with Capital Electric drove from Missouri, right through the hurricane-force winds to help.
“It was one of the wildest things I have ever been through. It was crazy,” he said. But he added that it was important to drive through the storm to be there for the people affected.
“Had to be here and get the power back on,” he said.
Hale said electric workers first need to assess the damage before they can properly restore power, a process is expected to take days.
Sunday’s landfall was 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina hit the region, ultimately becoming the costliest storm in American history.