DESPERATE Americans said they did not have enough cash to leave Louisiana as Hurricane Ida pummeled the state. At least one man has died and blackouts hit New Orleans since the storm made landfall on Sunday. Some residents stayed in Louisiana as they couldn’t afford a hotel room elsewhere while others couldn’t fill up […]
DESPERATE Americans said they did not have enough cash to leave Louisiana as Hurricane Ida pummeled the state.
At least one man has died and blackouts hit New Orleans since the storm made landfall on Sunday.
Some residents stayed in Louisiana as they couldn’t afford a hotel room elsewhere while others couldn’t fill up their cars.
Robert Owens, 27, tried to get a payday loan but was denied as he didn’t have enough credit history.
He told the Associated Press: “Our bank account is empty, we cannot afford to leave.”
Owens said other residents in Baton Rouge – the state capital – faced similar situations even though they wanted to protect their families.
He said: “A lot of us here in my neighborhood have to just hunker down and wait, not knowing how bad it’s going to get. It’s a terrifying feeling.
“There people who have funds to lean on are able to get out of here, but there’s a big chunk of people that are lower-income that don’t have a savings account to fall on.”
Owens said that his family would shelter in his wife’s Toyota Avalon car if their home was destroyed.
He said: “There’s a general feeling of fear in not knowing what’s going to be the aftermath of this.
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“That’s the most concerning thing. Like, what are we going to do if it gets really bad? Will we still be alive?”
Ida made landfall near Port Fourchon on Sunday morning, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center confirmed.
She strengthened to a Category 4 storm in just 24 hours – and hit the US on the exact date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier.
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards thinks Ida will be one of the strongest storms to hit the state “since at least the 1850s”.
More than a million people in New Orleans were left without power.
Ida’s winds caused an electrical transmission tower to fall into the Mississippi River.
The heavy downpours and ferocious winds even knocked off emergency generators at some hospitals.
In Thibodaux, some patients were ventilated by hand after emergency generators in the hospital stopped working, Newsweek reports.
Officials at the local health trust say power has been restored to the generators.
More than 20 nursing homes and 18 assisted living facilities were evacuated in the state.
And, violent gusts ripped the roof of the Lady of the Sea hospital in Lafourche Parish.
Slates were hurled off the roof as they were picked up by the winds, according to the New York Post.
Ochsner Medical Center was also affected but no injuries were reported and there was no “major” structural damage, according to WWL-TV.
Ida struck as intensive care units are packed with Covid patients.
The delta variant has ripped through the state and Louisiana has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the US.
There are more than 2,400 Covid patients in hospitals across the state.
Pictures show the devastation in New Orleans’ French Quarter as sections of buildings were ripped off by Ida.
Louisianans were caught up in torrential downpours and flash flooding as they tried to find somewhere to shelter.
Intense storm surges slammed against sea walls in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi.
The hurricane was downgraded to a tropical storm on Monday morning as it headed towards southwestern Mississippi.
Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said Ida had maximum sustained winds of 60mph.
It struck Louisiana with top winds of 150mph – a tie for the fifth strongest hurricane to ever hit the US mainland.
