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On Aug. 29, Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana and completely slammed the state with devastating high winds and torrential flooding, CNN reported. The category 4 storm left at least one person dead and over 1 million people without power as heavy rains flooded homes and tore apart the roofs of residents. Some Louisianians were trapped in their homes to face the hurricane head-on.
Robert Owens a 27-year-old Baton Rouge resident told AP News he was forced to brace the storm as he didn’t have enough money or gas to make it out of Lousiana in time before it hit Sunday.
“Our bank account is empty – we can’t afford to leave,” Owens explained. “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,” he continued.
“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,” Robert added. “We’re left behind.
The power outage in Louisiana has left residents across the state vulnerable to flooding and many are now without air conditioning or refrigeration as temperatures from the summer heat rise.
Robert recalled the sheer fear he felt as he rushed to power up electronics and stock up on food before the storm picked up in strength. The local Dollar Tree was closed and he and his family had little to protect themselves from potential water leaking into their home.
“There’s a general feeling of fear in not knowing what’s going to be the aftermath of this,” he said. “That’s the most concerning thing. Like, what are we going to do if it gets really bad? Will we still be alive? Is a tree going fall on top of us?”
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Ida’s record-breaking strength eventually tapered off after it made landfall at around 1 p.m. on Sunday, reducing to a tropical storm shortly after daybreak on Monday, but its catastrophic winds left the state in disarray, landing on the same day that Hurricane Katrina ravaged both Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years ago. AP news reported that Ida’s 150 mph winds made it the “fifth-strongest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S.”
With winds gusting at 60mph, flash-flooding continues to pose life-threatening concerns.
“We’ve suffered flooding before. We suffered storms before. But I’ve never seen water like this in my life,” Tim Kerney Jr. the mayor of Jean Lafitte told CNN. ” It just hit us in the worst way possible and it was such a massive storm that it just totally devastated us.”
Levees in Kerney’s city, which is just south of New Orleans, were over-flowing forcing people to seek shelter upon their roofs until rescue boats could arrive.
