Ida pummels Louisiana

Assessment teams await daylight to go on the ground to inspect damages caused by Ida, but significant impact is already expected, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said.

"It remained a Category 4 for several hours over the southern parts of Louisiana. So they just got the impacts from the winds, from the significant and intense rainfall as well as that storm surge for several hours," Criswell told CNN.

As Ida moves as a Category 1 storm into Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia, Criswell said there's still going to be significant rainfall, and people need to remain aware of the risks.

Meanwhile, "widespread structural damage" has already been reported, with a number of buildings that may have collapsed, hospitals running on generator power, and some people stranded, she said Monday.

"My initial reports are the levees around New Orleans did what they were supposed to do, but that intense rainfall, that's going to create a lot of urban flooding across many of the jurisdictions — New Orleans, Baton Rouge and all of the different localities in between. " Criswell said. "It's going to strain the drainage system. That with the debris, so it's going to take a while for some of that to clear up."

Officials in a parish badly affected by Hurricane Ida are warning people not to go out sight-seeing as the sun comes up.

Ida ripped through the area and the parish has “received numerous calls of fallen trees on homes and roadways,” reads a post on the St. Tammany Parish Facebook page.

Once the sun comes up teams will start “assessing and clearing the roadways,” the post says.

“If you are planning on sight-seeing, don’t. If you are on the roadways, you will be preventing us from clearing the roads safely and efficiently,” St. Tammany adds. 

And Slidell Police Department said their roof has been “compromised” due to Ida.

“You may have heard reports of the Slidell Police Department’s roof being compromised and water pouring into several offices. This is true, but has been temporarily repaired. We are OK,” reads a Facebook post from the force.

The department said overnight they received several reports of “downed trees and power lines, trees that have fallen on to houses, and people asking to be rescued from their homes,” and posted several photos showing large trees down across roadways.

Due to power outages across the parish, all of St. Tammany is under a boil water advisory.

The National Weather Service in New Orleans tweeted a long list of flooded street this morning, urging residents to "stay sheltered in place unless you absolutely have to travel."

Hurricane Ida slammed Louisiana with devastating force as a Category 4 hurricane Sunday. The entire city of New Orleans is currently without power after it was hit with "catastrophic transmission damage," the city office said in a Tweet Sunday night. 

Entergy Louisiana said some of its customers could be without power for weeks. And the storm surge of up to 15 feet and winds as strong as 150 mph could leave parts of southeast Louisiana "uninhabitable for weeks or months," according to a local hurricane statement from the NWS New Orleans.

In the wake of Hurricane Ida, the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office (LPSO) said it has deployed its deputies “in full force” to find people in need of help.

According to LPSO, cell phone service and phone lines remain out of service, including 911 and the Sheriff’s Office.

“Thousands of you have not heard from loved ones in many hours and are concerned about the welfare. We are spread out throughout the parish seeking to find anyone in need of help,” LPSO said.

The tweet acknowledged those who evacuated are likely anxious to get home to survey the damage and assist other impacted residents.

“Today is not that day. Parish officials will be making an announcement about reentry in the near future, but it will not be today,” LPSO said.

A curfew remains in effect “and will be strictly enforced,” the sheriff’s office added.

Hurricane Ida slammed Louisiana with devastating force as a Category 4 hurricane Sunday. Although Ida has now weakened to a tropical storm, resources to help those affected have been impacted.

Hospital staff are relying on generators to keep life-saving machines running and sleeping on air mattresses in their workplaces. New Orleans 9-1-1 reported technical difficulties amid power outages as of Monday morning, encouraging anyone experiencing an emergency to find their nearest fire station or approach the nearest officer.

Two of the three hospitals in Lafourche Parish sustained damage in Sunday's epic storm, Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre told CNN.

A portion of the roof of The Lady of the Sea General Hospital in Galliano was ripped off as Ida came ashore, Webre told CNN's Pamela Brown. The county was also forced to relocate its emergency operations center to a different building after the first building's roof began to leak Sunday, Webre told CNN.

Hospitals dealing with storm damage and attending to victims of the hurricane were largely already stretched by the Covid-19 pandemic.

"Before going into this storm, our hospital was already almost at capacity," Ochsner Health System's Dr. Derek Smith told CNN. "We know the coming hours are going to be even more of a test."

The hospital, which is near New Orleans, is running on generators, and staff there have been locked in – sleeping on air mattresses and working around the clock to care for patients, Smith said.

Hattiesburg, Mississippi, hadn't yet felt the worst of Ida when Mayor Toby Barker spoke to CNN Sunday night, but officials there were bracing for damage from the storm and stress on their hospitals.

The storm has also impacted access for rescuers to get in and residents to get out.

The Kerner Swing Bridge in Jefferson Parish was hit by a barge Sunday as Ida beat down on Louisiana, according to the parish government, prompting officials to warn residents it may not be safe to drive across.

"Any residents that may still be in Lafitte are advised to not attempt to drive on this bridge. We do not believe it is structurally safe," Jefferson Parish tweeted.

And due to fallen trees on the roadway, the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development shut down about 22 miles of Interstate 10, a major thoroughfare that transits the state east to west.

In Lafourche Parish, every road was impassible Sunday night, Webre told CNN.

Hurricane Ida has now weakened to become Tropical Storm Ida, but it has wrecked havoc in parts of Louisiana already.

CNN's Chad Myers put the wind damage in perspective.

"A Category 1, we're going to call it one times multiplier. It's a ... 75-mph storm. You get to a Category 3, it's 30 times more powerful and potential for damage than a Category 1," he said.

Ida was still a big storm "as it was moving on shore because it was running over water. It was running over the swamps and the ditches," he said. "It's not any cooler than the ocean or the Gulf of Mexico. That's why the storm did not slow down like a typical landfalling hurricane that does hit land."

As Ida moves northward as a Category 1 storm, it has "switched from a damage surge maker, a wind-damage maker, now to a rainmaker and a flood event." Myers said as he outlined what to expect next.

Watch:

Hurricane Ida slammed Louisiana with devastating force as a Category 4 hurricane Sunday, leaving at least one person dead and more than one million customers without power as it flooded homes, ripped off roofs and trapped residents in dangerous rising waters.

While the scope of the damage won't be clear until day breaks Monday and teams can assess the chaos, initial reports indicate the situation for many residents who stayed behind is dire.

The storm slowed after it made landfall around 1 p.m. ET Sunday near Port Fourchon, delivering catastrophic winds and torrential rains for hours.

Ida weakened to a tropical storm early Monday with sustained winds of 60 mph and the continued threat of life-threatening flash flooding.

"We've suffered flooding before. We suffered storms before. But I've never seen water like this in my life. It just hit us in the worst way possible and it was such a massive storm that it just totally devastated us," said Tim Kerner Jr, mayor of Jean Lafitte, south of New Orleans.

Levees were overtopped in his city and residents were forced to their roofs, waiting for rescue boats to arrive, Kerner said.

Ida slammed into Louisiana on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, tying with 2020's Hurricane Laura and the Last Island Hurricane of 1856 as the strongest ever to hit the state.

More than one million customers in Louisiana were without power as of early Monday morning, according to PowerOutage.US. Among them is all of Orleans Parish, which was hit with "catastrophic transmission damage," the city office said in a Tweet Sunday night. More than 105,000 customers were without power in Mississippi, PowerOutage.US reported.

Entergy Louisiana said some of its customers could be without power for weeks. And the storm surge of up to 15 feet and winds as strong as 150 mph could leave parts of southeast Louisiana "uninhabitable for weeks or months," according to a local hurricane statement from the National Weather Service in New Orleans

Nearly half the customers in the state of Louisiana are without power this morning after Tropical Storm Ida rammed into the state's coast as a powerful category 4 hurricane on Sunday. 

As of 5:30 a.m. ET, Poweroutage.us reports 1,017,535 outages across Louisiana. Most of the outages are concentrated in the southeastern part of the state. 

In neighboring Mississippi, 103,023 customers in the southwest part of the state are waking up without any power, according to Poweroutage.us. 

Top Areas by Outages

Louisiana    1,017,535

Mississippi    103,023

New Orleans and southern Louisiana have had more rain so far this year than they normally do on average.

This means the soil is saturated to the point that it essentially acts like the Gulf of Mexico, said CNN meteorologist Pedram Javaheri.

Moisture fuels the storm and the wet soils helped Ida to maintain hurricane strength for several hours after landfall, he said.

This is known as the "brown ocean effect," a phenomenon that affects around 20% of tropical storm systems, explained Javaheri.

"Still maintaining hurricane strength really speaks volumes as far as how intense of a storm we're dealing with," he said.

"This is among the strongest storms you'll ever see make landfall across the US."