Louisiana Ida aftermath: At least 700,000 are without power as cleanup continues from Hurricane Ida
Gov. John Bel Edwards said 718,559 customers remained without power days after Ida made landfall, down from a peak of about 1.1 million, as residents faced no water, no gasoline and sweltering heat.
At least 700,000 homes and businesses in Louisiana remained without power days after Hurricane Ida made landfall, Gov. John Bel Edwards said, down from a peak of roughly 1.1 million customers in the dark immediately after the storm — a group that included all of New Orleans. Edwards put the midday Saturday count at 718,559 customers, according to reporting on his news conference in Livingston Parish.
"Now is really the most dangerous time," Edwards said, warning residents about the risks of the sweltering, powerless aftermath even as the immediate storm threat had passed, per coverage of his remarks.
Alongside the power outages, roughly 441,000 people across 17 parishes had no running water at all, with an additional 319,000 residents under boil-water advisories, according to reporting on the storm's aftermath.
Life without power, water or gasoline
Residents described clearing rotting food from powerless refrigerators, sharing generators with neighbors, and borrowing buckets of swimming-pool water to bathe or flush toilets. Long lines wrapped around the block at the few gas stations that had both fuel and generator power to pump it, in a state where the heat and humidity did not let up after the storm passed.
The restoration effort
Entergy Louisiana, which serves more than 1 million customers in the state, projected it would restore power to the vast majority of its customers by the following Wednesday. More than 25,000 utility workers mobilized from around the country to support the restoration effort, according to reporting on the recovery.
What it signals
The gap between the peak outage (about 1.1 million) and the days-later count (roughly 700,000) shows restoration moving forward but slowly — and the water crisis, layered on top of the power crisis, is what turned a storm-damage story into a public-health one: NPR and other outlets reported some Louisianans were still without power more than two weeks after landfall, well past Entergy's initial Wednesday target for most customers.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by CBS News, PBS NewsHour and NPR. It restores a story originally published on this site in September 2021; figures are as reported at the time.