Hurricane Ida death toll rises to five as alligator kills man, 71, and highway collapses killing two

The Hurricane Ida death toll rose to five late on Monday after a 71-year-old man was thought to have been killed by an alligator in flood waters and a highway collapse killed two people.  

More than 1million people in Louisiana remain without power and are facing weeks without it in stifling heat and humidity. 

The brutal hurricane has moved on to northeast Louisiana and has downgraded to a tropical storm. It allows emergency services to begin the grim task of going door to door, looking for survivors but expecting other victims who tried to ride it out.

In New Orleans, police are tackling opportunistic looters who ransacked stores on Monday. Police are also investigating a shooting which happened at 11pm last night. Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson on Monday warned residents against taking to the streets and said he had implemented the force’s ‘anti-looting plan’ with the National Guard. 

Among the dead is a Louisiana man whose wife told WWL-TV that he was eaten by an alligator while wading through waist-deep flood water in their shed. She said she tried to save him but the gator snatched him beneath the water. 

The highway collapse was in Mississippi. Photos from the scene show two badly damaged vehicles in a large hole which the road had fallen into, with officials saying both lanes of Highway 26, found west of Lucedale, had collapsed as a result of storm damage.   

Ida has now weakened to a tropical storm and is plowing northeast. She is expected to cut through north west Alabama on Tuesday morning the pass through Tennessee, traveling into West Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey by Thursday before showering New York on Friday and eventually moving off-land.

As the flood waters subside, communities are now faced with an arduous clean-up and damage repair mission and emergency services have warned that in the days ahead, the death toll is likely to rise as more people are found. 

Officials are also anticipating a drastic spike in COVID cases, with the storm creating a ‘perfect petri dish’ for spread of the virus.    

Lt. Governor Billy Nungesser said on Tuesday morning that crews would go out in boats and high-water trucks ‘at first light’ to find any survivors.  

‘We’ll be flying out first light today. Knowing so many people stayed behind, we expect there will be more people found who have passed. Too many people always ride these storms out and take their life into their own hands. 

‘Some of the people called in… but the first responders go house to house checking attics, as the water goes down, checking the homes out. They make a first pass looking for survivors, and then a second pass looking for anyone that might have died in those homes.

‘It’s unfortunate that people stay behind and the first responders do a great job of getting there quickly to get the ones who did make it through,’ he said during an early morning appearance on Today. 

He said the storm had come at a particularly tough time for the state, which is already grappling with COVID-19. 

‘My heart sinks because I know what we went through to rebuild after Katrina. I rode out Katrina, and rescued people and brought them to my home. To know we’ve got a long road ahead of us… the good news is Louisiana helps its neighbors out and people are already on the way to help out. 

‘With COVID on top of this, the stress on families is just incredible and we’re just going to have to pull together.’ 

People now face weeks without power. He said anyone who  has lost it must go somewhere where there is power or a generator until it can be restored. 

‘That’s a real concer with so many people out of power, especially seniors, in this weather. 25,000 contractors are out there working day and night. Some areas will come back on in days and some will take weeks. You’re hearing weeks to get 90% back on…I don’t have an update on that. 

‘In the short term, people are going to have to have places to go until their power gets back on. As you mentioned the water, we’ve got to get the water pressure… when the oak trees fall they rip, they rip up those water lines.’ 

The weather disaster hit a state where hospitals are already crowded with COVID patients, cases of the Delta variant were surging and nurses were in short supply. Louisiana is currently averaging 2,713 new Covid-19 cases a day, along with 55 daily deaths. 

It has one of the lowest vaccination rates among US states, with just over 40 percent of the population receiving their first dose. 

A handful of smaller hospitals have been forced to evacuate patients, while all major regional hospitals were doing fine for now in terms of damage, Dr. Joseph Kanter, the top medical official in Louisiana, said.

‘Outside of a few, small outlying hospitals, it doesn’t appear to be anything catastrophic,’ said Kanter, who worked through Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when some two dozen hospitals in New Orleans had to be evacuated.

The alligator death and the two deaths on Highway 26 add to the two that had already been reported as a result of the storm. The 71-year-old man was reportedly killed by the alligator when the animal bit off his arm as he waded through flood waters caused by the hurricane. 

Earlier, New Orleans’ mayor announced that the death toll from the storm had risen to two after a driver drowned in their vehicle in the city. On Sunday, a 60-year-old man died when a tree fell on a home just outside Baton Rouge. Authorities have not released any information about the identities of the victims. 

Mayor LaToya Cantrell said at a press conference on Monday that the city is cracking down on looting and all offenders will be charged with a state felony. 

She said: ‘My directive has been very clear: lock ’em up. We will not tolerate and we have not tolerated it.’

Her comments came after a group of men were caught by a drone camera trying to rob an ATM machine in the scorched remains of a market in the New Orleans neighborhood of St. Claude.  

In another incident, witnesses used their cell phone to record several people looting a store in New Orleans East. 

Looters often take advantage of disasters like Ida and New Orleans is all too familiar with this as it became a hotbed of criminal activity in the wake of Hurricane Katrina 16 years ago. 

Police Chief Shaun Ferguson added that the department deployed a group of ‘anti-looting’ officers and is working with the Louisiana National Guard to protect businesses from looters. 

Ida made landfall in Louisiana on Sunday, becoming the fifth most powerful hurricane to strike the United States. 

The hurricane center has warned the storm may still dump as much as 8 inches of rain in central Mississippi through Tuesday, and it could trigger flash flooding in parts of the Tennessee Valley, the Ohio Valley and the Mid-Atlantic later in the week.

Speaking on Monday, Louisiana resident Theophilus Charles described the previous night when Ida hit the gulf coast and tore through the state, destroying his home.

‘I ain’t got a dry spot in the house,’ he said, choking up. ‘My roof fell, I lost all my clothes, my furniture, my appliances, everything.’

‘I was born here. We went through all the major hurricanes here. So I figure, I’ll stay here and ride this one out,’ Charles told Reuters on Monday. Lying in the front room, he saw the roof blow off and felt the whole house shaking. He hopes never to have to endure another hurricane again.

Meanwhile, it was learned on Monday that a storied New Orleans jazz site where a young Louis Armstrong once worked toppled when Ida blew through Louisiana.

The Karnofsky Tailor Shop, where a Jewish family employed Armstrong, collapsed Sunday in storm.

Armstrong would play a small tin horn as he worked on the coal and junk wagons, according to the National Park Service.

The business opened downtown in 1913 and had a residence above it where the late jazz legend would often eat meals. The family, who provided Armstrong a ‘second home,’ lent him money to buy his first cornet.

‘Louis said it was the Karnofskys that instilled the love of singing in his heart,’ jazz historian and retired photojournalist John McCusker said, according to WWL-TV. 

WDSU-TV reported early on Tuesday that the Mississippi Highway Patrol, emergency personnel and rescue teams responded to Highway 26 in George County, about 60 miles northeast of Biloxi, to find both the east and westbound lanes collapsed, troopers confirmed.

Cpl. Cal Robertson with the Mississippi Highway Patrol said the collapse is around 50 to 60 feet (15 to 18 meters) in length and 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 meters) deep.

Robertson said seven vehicles were involved in the incident and that, ‘some of these cars are stacked on top of each other.’ Cranes will be needed to get the cars out of the hole, he said.

Robertson believes the torrential amount of rain may have caused the roadway to collapse, adding that drivers may not have seen the roadway in front of them was impassable. 

The identities and conditions of the of those involved in the accident have not yet been released. 

More fatalities were expected as the true extent of the damage caused by the hurricane is revealed, Governor John Bel Edwards told reporters on Monday as Ida grinded north as a tropical storm. 

The National Hurricane Center said Ida’s maximum sustained winds had dropped to 35 mph by Monday afternoon as the storm’s remnants churned northwest of Jackson, Mississippi.

Virtually no one in Louisiana has electricity and many water systems are also out, Edwards said. Energy company Entergy Corp said customers in the hardest-hit areas could experience power outages for weeks.

Ida arrived 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, one of the most catastrophic and deadly U.S. storms on record, struck the Gulf Coast, and about a year after the last Category 4 hurricane, Laura, battered Louisiana.

President Joe Biden declared a major disaster in the state, ordering federal assistance to bolster recovery efforts.

Rescue crews in St. John the Baptist Parish reported that 800 people were rescued as internet and communications services began to come back online, though officials said that 18,000 residents in the parish remained without power as of late Monday. 

Accuweather’s Dr. Joel N. Myers said on Monday that the total economic damage caused by Ida will likely fall between $70billion and $80billion. 

Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, said that 20 water rescues were staged in three counties on Monday. In total, some 85,000 Mississippians were without power as of late Monday. 

In Alabama, at least three people were injured after an unconfirmed tornado believed to have been whipped up by feeder bands from Ida struck homes in Saraland, according to AL.com. Several buildings along US 43 suffered damage, and none of the victims sustained life-threatening injuries. 

During Monday’s press conference, Mayor Cantrell noted that looting is nowhere near as bad as it may seem, stating, ‘there is no widespread looting going on in the city of New Orleans. 

‘What we do have that’s widespread are residents who are being neighbors, who are understand and exhibiting the spirit of humility, of empathy, who are cleaning up their lawns and who are servicing their community. That’s widespread in the city of New Orleans, that’s who we are.’

Nevertheless, the city has already made ‘several arrests’ involving looters, Ferguson said and urged residents to report looting when they see it. 

‘It is also incumbent upon the community to lean in and lean forward and say this is not the time,’ he said. ‘Right now we are going through some trying times and we need to really pull ourselves through this together.’

So far, at least one person was taken into custody for looting the Dollar General in New Orleans East. 

CBS News reporter Beau Zimmer posted the photos from the scene on Twitter, which revealed the interior of the trashed store and the parking lot outside littered by overturned shopping carts with merchandise spilling out of them.

It is not clear if the pair from the drone video were apprehended or got away with any cash from the ATM machine they are seen in the footage trying to pry open. 

One of the men in the video is seen toying with the machine. Another stands beside him and sees the drone before turning his back and leaving the destroyed business.

The video, which was posted to Twitter by WXChasing (Brandon Clement), has yielded 19,100 views and is captioned, ‘The moment looters realize a drone is watching them try to break into an ATM [machine] in burned down St. Claude market in the lower 9th ward.’

The New Orleans Fire Department also posted several photos of the market in St. Claude after it had burned down in the aftermath of the storm, but did not explain what caused the fire and if the business owners were there when it happened. 

Local residents will have to contend with the lack of electricity. With high temperatures expected to remain in the mid-80s for the foreseeable future, residents won’t have access to air conditioning. 

Entergy Louisiana officials said on Monday it may take days for utility crews to determine the extent of the damage to New Orleans’ power grid and even longer to restore power to the area, with Bloomberg reporting that repairs could take until late September to complete.  

‘We have a lot of rebuilding ahead of us,’ the company wrote on Twitter. ‘We’ll be better prepared to give restoration estimates once assessments are done.’

By 7 a.m., the company said more than 888,000 people were without power in Louisiana after Hurricane Ida snapped cables, damaged buildings, uprooted trees and spread debris.

More than 11,000 Entergy workers, supplemented by 25,000 workers from at least 32 states and the District of Columbia, were working to restore power. 

As officials begin to assess damage, power will restored in a way that gets service to the greatest number of customers as safely and quickly as possible, Entergy said. 

Pamela Mitchell said Monday she was thinking about leaving New Orleans until power returned, but her 14-year-old daughter, Michelle, was determined to stay and was preparing to clean out the fridge and put perishables in an ice chest.

Mitchell had already spent a hot and frightening night at home while Ida’s winds shrieked, and she thought the family could tough it out.

‘We went a week before, with Zeta,’ she said, recalling an outage during the hurricane that hit the city last fall.

Other residents of the city were relying on generators – or neighbors who had them. Hank Fanberg said both of his neighbors had offered him access to their generators. He also had a plan for food.

‘I have a gas grill and charcoal grill,’ he said.

The hurricane blew ashore on the 16th anniversary of Katrina, the 2005 storm that breached New Orleans’ levees, devastated the city and was blamed for 1,800 deaths.

This time, New Orleans escaped the catastrophic flooding some had feared. But city officials still urged people who evacuated to stay away for at least a couple of days because of the lack of power and fuel.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued emergency fuel waivers for Louisiana and Mississippi, effective immediately, on Monday night. It will end on Sept. 16.

Some places were also dealing with water problems. Eighteen water systems were out, impacting more than 312,000 people, and an additional 14 systems affecting another 329,000 people were under boil water advisories, Edwards said Monday.

The hurricane twisted and collapsed a giant tower that carries key transmission lines over the Mississippi River to the New Orleans area, causing widespread outages, Entergy and local authorities said. The power company said more than 2,000 miles of transmission lines were out of service, along with 216 substations. The tower had survived Katrina.

The storm also flattened utility poles, toppled trees onto power lines and caused transformers to explode.  

On Monday morning, 216 substations, 207 transmission lines and more than 2,000 miles of transmission lines were down.  

Meanwhile, the Sewer and Water Board of New Orleans said most, if not all of its 84 sewage pumping stations were without power. It was relying on generators to keep pumps working to drain the storm water out of the city and bring drinking water in. 

The damage from Hurricane Ida is still being assessed and President Joe Biden recently warned that the death toll – which currently stands at two people – will rise as the human cost of the storm that ravaged the state began to emerge.

Speaking on a conference call to governors affected by the extreme weather event Monday, the president warned he expected the number of people found dead as a result of Ida to rise considerably. 

Biden echoed Edwards. Speaking on MSNBC on Monday, the governor warned that more bad news lies ahead as search and rescue efforts continued in the wake of Sunday’s Category 4 hurricane. 

He said: ‘I don’t want to mislead anyone. Robust search and rescue is happening right now and I fully expect that that death count will go up considerably throughout the day.’ 

Later on Monday, Edwards said the state’s focus after Hurricane Ida continues to be centered on search and rescue, to make sure all the hardest-hit areas are checked multiple times.

‘Saving lives is the number one priority,’ he said.

‘Those search and rescue efforts are going to continue all day, and quite frankly for as long as necessary.’

The governor said the Louisiana National Guard alone rescued 191 people across St. John the Baptist, Jefferson and Orleans parishes by boat, helicopter and high-water vehicle.

More than 5,000 Guard soldiers are working on the disaster response, and more soldiers are expected from other states within days.

Edwards said the state will soon be transitioning into a ‘grid search’ of the hardest hit areas, going to search every single home on each street to determine if anyone is home and needing assistance. 

‘Then, to make sure that we’ve adequately covered the area, we’ll go back and do a secondary search,’ he said.

‘But what we did mostly to date today was try to catch up on the 911 calls.

‘So we were actively partnered with local authorities and going out and doing search and rescue at individual addresses where we know people had called for help.’ 

Biden also urged Edwards to ‘just holler’ for help after Hurricane Ida ravaged the state.

‘We’re providing any help that you’re going to need,’ the president told Louisiana and Mississippi mayors and governors during a conference call Monday afternoon as Ida made its way north.

He said the federal government has sent 200 generators to the area as one million people remain without power in the wake of the hurricane. 

The president added that he has asked the Federal Aviation Administration to authorize the use of drones to assess Ida’s damage to energy infrastructure. 

Biden said he has also ordered the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security to make available any satellite imagery that could help assess the extent of the damage. 

Additionally, he said, he is activating cooperative cellphone access so that if one cellphone carrier loses service, their customers in the area can temporarily switch to another cellphone carrier. That came after AT&T announced its network had gone down for 40 per cent of customers in Louisiana, which, combined with power shortages for 1 million people, made life a nightmare for hard-hit residents trying to make emergency calls or work from home. 

‘We’re going to stand with you and the people of the Gulf as long as it takes you to recover,’ Biden told the local elected official, saying ‘we’re providing any help that you may need.’

‘Folks get knocked down, we’re there to help you get back on your feet,’ Biden said before telling Edwards directly: ‘If there’s anything else you need, you know just call, just holler.’

Biden’s conference call later sparked controversy after he used the word ‘boy’ to describe his senior adviser Cedric Richmond, who is black.

The president faced casual racism allegations over the remark, which saw him say: ‘I’m here with my senior adviser and boy who knows Louisiana very, very well and New Orleans, Cedric Richmond 

His remarks come after Ida left 1.043 million people without power in Louisiana and another 115,000 in the same situation in Mississippi as it dumped torrential rain on the area, flooding much of New Orleans before being downgraded to a tropical storm Monday. 

One person, a 60-year-old man, has been confirmed dead. He has not been named and was killed after a tree fell on his home in Prairieville, Louisiana, on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the human cost of Ida began to emerge on Monday, after a famed New Orleans tailor shop where jazz legend Louis Armstrong once lived was among buildings destroyed.

Karnofsky Tailor Shop and Residence, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, was reduced to a pile of bricks and rubble by Ida.  

It started out as a tailor shop in 1913, and Armstrong ‘worked for the Karnofskys on their coal and junk wagons, tooting ‘a small tin horn’ and ate meals with the family,’ who eventually gave him money for his first concert.

‘Louis said it was the Karnofskys that instilled the love of singing in his heart,’ John McCusker, a retired journalist who supported the efforts to get the store historically landmarked, told WWL.

The Karnofsys’ son, Morris, would go on to open the first jazz record store in town and the Register of Historic Places says, ‘Armstrong visited his friend and musician buddies at the store on his many return trips to the city.’

Another apartment building in Kenner, Louisiana burned overnight after the storm struck it.

And Dartanian Stovall was pictured distraught outside his home in New Orleans, Louisiana, on Monday after it was destroyed by the storm while he was renovating it.

He said the chimney fell first, and the rest of the house followed.

Fortunately, he managed to crawl to safety. Stovall, who was pictured surveying the wreckage of his home with his hands clasped to his head, said: ‘At least I’m alive,’ as he surveyed the damage on Monday.  

Cynthia Lee Cheng – mayor of Jefferson Parish – also outlined the horror faced by some of her neighbors currently trapped in attics in the trashed town of Lafitte.

She said: ‘This is an area if you want to think of it like swampland, there’s alligators out there.

Door-to-door searches are currently underway in Jefferson County, using boats in badly-flooded areas. Louisiana has also activated 5,000 National Guard members.

A US Army spokesman said 195 high-water vehicles and 73 rescue boats had been prepped and staged across south Louisiana to aid door-to-door search attempts. The National Guard has also organized 34 helicopters to support search and rescue, evacuation and reconnaissance missions as needed.  

All of New Orleans lost power around sunset on Sunday, leaving people without refrigeration and air conditioning in the hot summer weather, as they used flashlights to search through the damage as the storm passed by around dawn.

Figures from power supplier Entergy confirmed that 144,000 homes were without power in the Big Easy. A further 195,000 are without power in nearby Jefferson Parish, while 80,000 are without power in St Tammany Parish.

The power cuts spelt bad news for Louisianans trying to work from home, and there was further misery for many on Monday, when cellphone and internet provider AT&T reported that 40 per cent of its network was down in the state due to Ida. 

Search and rescue operations began at around 3 a.m., with the Louisiana National Guard going door to door to check on residents, many of whom are still stuck on the second-floor or the attics of their homes.

The United States Coast Guard also helped evacuate seven patients from a southern Louisiana hospital, Edwards said Monday afternoon. 

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam also tweeted that the state has deployed 35 members of Virginia Task Force 2 to the area and Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced on Monday the state was sending 132 firefighters, 30 fire engines, 14 crew members and a helicopter to Louisiana, with the Texas A&M Task Force One providing urban search and rescue capabilities.

‘The State of Texas is proud to support our neighbors in Louisiana by sending emergency resources and personnel to assist with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida,’ Abbott said in a statement.

‘We will never forget the kindness, generosity and support offered by the people of Louisiana during Hurricane Harvey four years ago, and we are eager to support them in their own time of need.’ 

But the Louisiana State Police told residents on Facebook ‘it may be difficult to get help to you for quite some time,’ as communication is limited in certain areas.

The State Police noted that as troopers continue to clear roadways ‘the full extent of damage is yet to be seen,’ and search and rescue workers still cannot get to certain areas.

‘A large portion of travel routes are blocked by down trees and power lines,’ they wrote. ‘In addition, there is standing water in some areas, which can deteriorate roads and sweep vehicles away. Debris is also scattered throughout the area, which can make navigating our roadways very difficult.’

They asked residents to refrain from traveling at this time ‘as it is these dangerous conditions that can create additional emergencies that could be prevented.’ 

A total of 950,000 homes have lost power across Louisiana as of Monday morning, with another 100,000 without electricity in Mississippi as the 911 system in Orleans Parish experienced technical difficulties for a second day in a row.

When the storm was at its strongest on Sunday, its winds raged at 150mph and picked up to just below 157mph – which would make it a Category 5 storm – and had it tie as the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever hit the US mainland, according to the Associated Press.

Within the storm’s first 20 hours, Louisiana saw a maximum of 17 inches of rainfall in an area just west of New Orleans, according to a tweet from Greg Carbin of NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center. As rainfall continues, the National Weather Service predicts that Ida could reach a total of 24 inches of rain. 

Ida is now set to move across Mississippi – sparking flood warnings for that state though Tuesday. The tropical storm warning for Louisiana was discontinued by late Monday morning.

The weather event will cross the north east tip of Alabama and into Tennessee in the early hours of Tuesday, with locals warned to prepare for flash floods caused by heavy rain, and winds of up to 60mph. 

It will move into the north east on Thursday. And while the extreme weather event will have substantially weakened in power by then, Ida is still expected to dump three inches of water across much of the area.

People in areas including New England – whose soils were saturated by rainwater during Tropical Storm Henri last week – fear any more sudden inundations could cause flash flooding. 

The power outage in New Orleans was caused by a tower toppled by Ida, with energy suppliers warning that power will be off indefinitely while damage assessments are carried out – and that locals could face weeks before it returns.  

Entergy confirmed the only power in New Orleans was coming from generators, the city’s Office of Homeland Security and Energy Preparedness tweeted, citing ‘catastrophic transmission damage.’ The city relies on Entergy for backup power for the pumps for the levees.  

That has sparked fears locals could poison themselves by attempting to use the generators – which emit dangerous carbon monoxide – in poorly ventilated indoor areas.

Edwards said hospitals, many of which are overrun with COVID patients, will have priority in power restoration. 

The Category Four storm caused all eight transmission lines into New Orleans to go down, and created a load imbalance that knocked all power generation into the region offline, Entergy spokesman Brandon Scardigli said in a statement to Nola.com.

He said the company is working to ‘assess a path forward to restore power to those who can take it.’ But locals have warned that power could be out for weeks, given the scale of the damage that must be repaired. 

Additionally, officials in Jefferson Parish said a transmission tower that provides electricity for New Orleans and the east bank of the parish collapsed into the river.

The parish’s Emergency Management Director told WVUE that cables that once hung across the Mississippi River were now buried under water.

New Orleans City Councilman Joe Giarrusso also said power companies’ estimates that electricity would be restored in the coming days was optimistic.

‘I think we have to be realistic at the same time, and prepare people for a worst-case scenario, just like [with] Hurricane Laura and Lake Charles, where it took weeks,’ he told CNN. 

‘One of the things that we’re going to have to think, and I’m sure the city is working on right now, is for people who may not have the means – how could we get them to where they need, so they are safe’ as people may run out of food and water in the coming days.

Meanwhile, there were reports that the levees – which had been upgraded since Hurricane Katrina devastated the area exactly 16 years ago – once again failed or were overtopped, leaving houses flooded with saturated sail turning parts of the city into a phenomenon known as brown ocean.

That sees saturated soils and swampy ground absorb very low quantities of rain water from storms or hurricanes, or none at all. 

The phenomenon meant Ida barely lost power after it hit the New Orleans shoreline on Sunday afternoon. Scientists say relatively warm groundwater also helped ramp up Ida’s power even more. 

Ida’s strength was so ferocious that it pushed water flowing out into the Gulf of Mississippi back into the Mississippi River, causing ‘negative flow’ – water flowing backwards, Army Corps of Engineers Spokesman Ricky Boyette said.

There were four flash flood emergencies in place through parts of southeastern Louisiana, CNN reported, with between eight to 16 inches of rain in LaPlace. Local law enforcement also reported flash flooding in Lafitte and Jean Lafitte.