HOUMA, La. (AP) – New Orleans lifted a night curfew Wednesday as the city was nearing full power ten days after Hurricane Ida, but hundreds of thousands outside the city were still without electricity and water. and more than a quarter of a million children were unable to return to school.
The city was left completely in the dark when Hurricane Ida crashed off the coast of Louisiana with winds of 150 mph (240 mph) on August 29 and reduced energy to more than a million people in the whole state. Two days later, New Orleans police and Mayor LaToya Cantrell imposed a curfew from 8 p.m. to 6 p.m. citing cases of theft and other misdemeanors. They withdrew the order Wednesday morning, but the police department said in a statement that it would maintain “increased and concentrated patrols throughout the city.”
Meanwhile, officials raised the number of state deaths in Ida on Wednesday to 26, and the additional 11 deaths occurred in the city of New Orleans. The deaths occurred between Aug. 30 and Monday, but the Orleans parish coroner just confirmed them as storms, the state health department said.
Nine of New Orleans’ fatalities came from “excessive heat during a power outage,” according to the health department. The remaining two deaths involved carbon monoxide poisoning. The heat-related deaths affected people aged 64 to 79, the department said.
Also Wednesday, Superintendent of State Education Cade Brumley noted that 250,000 students were still unable to attend class due to the hurricane. Prior to Ida, Louisiana schools had been open despite widespread cases of COVID-19, although they had a state mask mandate for all indoor locations.
“We need to get these kids back with us as soon as we can,” Brumley said.
In New Orleans, school superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. said school damage appeared to be minimal, but that power must be restored to all buildings and that teachers, staff and families must return to school. city.
“Now more than ever, our children will benefit from the comfort that routine, structured daily schooling can provide,” Lewis said in a statement Wednesday. “So let’s all come together to reopen our schools quickly and safely.”
Lewis said he hopes classes will resume for next week and that all students will return a week later.
No school reopening estimates have been provided for the five parishes hardest hit by Hurricane Ida and home to some 320,000 people: Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. James, St. Charles and St. John the Baptist. Ten days after the hurricane, 96% of utility customers in these parishes are still without electricity.
In the town of Houma, in the parish of Terrebonne, there were bucket trucks with liners on all the streets and, as the day progressed, there were signs of progress: the street lights began to work on the busy Grand Caillou road in first thing in the afternoon.
Although power was occurring in some parts of the parish of Terrebonne, its use was limited to Coy Verdin. The 52-year-old fisherman was staying at his son’s house in Houma. His own house next to the bay was nearly destroyed by the storm.
“All the ceilings fell off. You can see the light of day through the roof, ”said Verdin. “All we have is basically a shell.”
Ida scattered most of her 200 crab traps to unknown parts. “All I have left is my boat and some of my commercial fishing gear,” he said.
The St. John the Baptist Parish School System website states that all schools and offices will be closed “until further notice” while officials inspect the buildings. Lafourche Parish Schools Superintendent Jarod Martin indicated a “long and extensive road to recovery” on the website of this school system, with no timeline for a return to sight.
Across the state, crews have restored power to 600,000 of the 902,000 that lost electricity at the height of Hurricane Ida, Entergy Louisiana President and CEO Phillip May said in a conference call Wednesday with reporters .
Meanwhile, in New Orleans, the electric company expects to reclaim 90 percent of the city online on Wednesday evening, said Deanna Rodriguez, president and CEO of Entergy New Orleans.
“The larger area of New Orleans is coming back to life,” Rodriguez said.
May warned that some people who turn on the power again could still lose it at some point in the next few days. This is because Ida severely left the canopy of the trees and the damaged branches and twigs that were still in the trees could be shaken and fallen.
Access to fuel was still terrible on Wednesday, with the website GasBuddy.com reporting that approximately 48% of Baton Rouge gas stations did not have petrol. About 56% of New Orleans stations were also dry.
Some 62,000 people were still without running water in Louisiana, the state Department of Health reported. This is significantly less than the hundreds of thousands of people who had no water immediately after the fall of Ida. Still, more than 580,000 people were told to boil the water for safety.
In many neighborhoods, houses are still habitable. About 3,200 people are in group shelters around Louisiana, while another 25,000 people whose homes have been damaged are housed in hotel rooms through the Louisiana Transition Reception Program. Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The death toll from Ida in Louisiana rose to 15 on Tuesday after the state Department of Health reported two additional storm-related fatalities: a 68-year-old man who fell from a roof while repaired the damage caused by Hurricane Ida and a 71-. man of the year who died from lack of oxygen during a power outage. The remnants of the storm also caused historic flooding, record rainfall and tornadoes from Virginia to Massachusetts. killing at least 50 more people.
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Associated Press writer Jeff Martin contributed to this story from Marietta, Georgia.