Ida left more than 1 million without power, possibly for weeks. And now comes the scorching heat
Ida, which made landfall Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane, has already contributed to four deaths. Hundreds of people have been rescued, but search-and-rescue crews haven't been able to access some of the hardest-hit areas, so it's not yet clear how many residents might be still be trapped by flooding or debris.
Officials say electricity might not be restored to some areas for a month, which could prove life-threatening as intense heat moves into the region.
The National Weather Service issued a heat advisory for southern Louisiana and Mississippi from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday. More than 2 million people in the area are under the advisory,
That means some residents who stayed and rode out the storm will face heat indices of up to 105 degrees -- without air conditioning. Heat is the No. 1 weather-related cause of fatalities in the US, the NWS said.
Many local officials have urged those who evacuated not to come home yet, citing downed power lines, impassable roads and potential hindrances to rescue workers.
"Many of the life supporting infrastructure elements are not present, are not operating right now," Gov. John Bel Edwards said Tuesday. "Please don't come home before they tell you that it's time."
Still, the damage left in Ida's wake is a far cry from that left by Hurricane Katrina, the 2005 storm that caused New Orleans' levee system to fail, flooding 80% of the city and killing over 1,800 people. The government has spent billions of dollars in the 16 years since rebuilding and strengthening that levee system, and the infrastructure upgrades appear to have worked as designed.
"There were a few smaller levees that were overtopped, to some degree, and for some duration of time, and that did result in some people's homes are being flooded," Edwards said Monday. "But they did not fail."
Ida remains a threat for other states across the eastern US. Now a tropical depression, the storm is bringing heavy rain and the threat of flash floods to Tennessee, the scene of deadly flooding just last week. Ida is then set to move toward the mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Nearly 80 million people are under a flash flood threat from the storm, stretching from Alabama to Massachuset
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