Hurricane Ida swept through Louisiana with furious winds that ripped roofs off buildings and storm surge so powerful it moved homes. What it wrought on the living it also wrought on the dead, moving vaults and caskets and adding another layer of trauma for families and communities recovering from the powerful storm.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Sam was centered about 825 miles (1,325 kilometers) south-southeast of Bermuda and should pass to the east of the island.
New Orleans has lifted a nightly curfew as the city moves closer to regaining full power, but 96% of utility customers in Louisiana's hardest-hit communities are still without electricity.
The power situation has improved greatly since Ida first hit. In the first hours after the storm, nearly 1.1 million customers were in the dark — including all of New Orleans.
By REBECCA SANTANA, MELINDA DESLATTE and JANET MCCONAUGHEY
In addition to the power outages, the storm tore apart water systems At least 600,000 customers had no running water. Hundreds of thousands of other homes and business were being told to boil their water before using it.
Four nursing home residents died after Hurricane Ida, but full details of their deaths are unknown because state health inspectors said Thursday that they were turned away from examining conditions at the facility to which they had been evacuated.
More than 1 million homes and businesses in Louisiana and Mississippi - including all of New Orleans - were left without power when Ida slammed the electric grid with its 150 mph winds
By REBECCA SANTANA, KEVIN McGILL and JANET McCONNAUGHEY
Rescue workers set out in hundreds of boats and helicopters to reach people trapped by floodwaters and utility crews mobilized Monday after Hurricane Ida swamped the Louisiana coast and shattered a large swath of the state’s electrical grid in the sweltering, late-summer heat.
Hurricane Ida blasted ashore along the Louisiana coast on Sunday, with the eye of one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the U.S. arriving near the barrier island of Grand Isle.
A hurricane watch for New Orleans and an emergency declaration for the state of Louisiana were declared. Category 3 hurricanes are capable of causing devastating damage.
Rains from the storm, which spared coastal areas of New York and New England major damage when its center made landfall Sunday in Rhode Island as a tropical storm, deluged areas from New Hampshire to New York City and down to New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
The Category 1 storm had already soaked earthquake-damaged Haiti, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands en route to a direct hit on the Riviera Maya, the heart of Mexico’s tourism industry.
Authorities combing areas of North Carolina flooded by the remnants of Tropical Storm Fred said Thursday that two people have been found dead and about 20 were unaccounted for.
Tropical Depression Fred swirled into the northeastern U.S. on Wednesday, unleashing heavy rains and threatening to unleash mudslides and flash floods in upstate New York after closing interstate highways in the lower Appalachians.
Fewer than 30,000 customers were without power in Florida and Georgia after the storm crashed ashore late Monday afternoon near Cape San Blas in the Florida Panhandle.
Heavy rain from Tropical Storm Grace forced a temporary halt Tuesday to the Haitian government’s response to the deadly weekend earthquake, feeding the growing anger and frustration among thousands who were left homeless.
