Hurricane Ida made landfall in New Orleans Sunday, hitting the city on the same date as Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Ida arrived in Louisiana with top winds of 150 miles per hour and was reduced to a Category 3 storm as it moved inland, Bloomberg reports. These wind speeds tied a record set by Hurricane Laura in 2020 and a storm from the 1800s. Katrina made landfall with 126 mph winds.
As of 5:30 am CT on Monday, more than 960,000 customers in New Orleans were without power, and blackouts could last for weeks, reports say. This comes after Entergy, the company that runs the city’s power, was investigated for its blackouts during a winter freeze that hit the south in February.
Ida, a Category 4 hurricane when it made landfall, was predicted to be stronger than Hurricane Katrina, which landed as a Category 3 storm. Katrina devastated New Orleans with fatal floods after levees that were intended to protect the city failed.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell warned residents to evacuate over the weekend, but acknowledged that it was too late for a mandatory evacuation, as the storm system upgraded from storms to a Category 4 hurricane in just a few days.
On Monday morning, Louisiana Governor John Bell Edwards announced that the state had deployed more than 1,600 personnel to conduct search and rescue across Louisiana.
Louisiana emergency personnel began assessing damage and responding to incidents Monday morning. The severe wind and rain has left New Orleans and been downgraded to a tropical storm as it moved up to Mississippi Monday.
