Hurricane Ida: Now Awaiting Word On Just How Bad Things Got

Roofing and other material littered New Orleans'

French Quarter during Hurrcane Ida. Photo: Eric Gay/AP

 When a big, disastrous storm strikes, it often takes a day, or more often several days, to understand just how bad things got. 

We're in that mode right now with Hurricane Ida.

As we all know by now, Ida crashed ashore in Louisiana with top winds of 150 mph.  We know of one death already, but that toll will surely rise as people get out to the hardest hit areas to check and see who made it and who didn't.

Judging from the social media posts and videos, we know there's huge storm surge damage, never mind what the wind did. New Orleans is entirely blacked out as the power grid basically blew away in Ida. People were pleading on social media for help as storm surges inundated the homes they were in, but nobody could come get them. The weather was too harsh in the midst of Ida.

Early images of New Orleans this morning shows collapsed buildings, windows blown off, and parts of facades ripped off of high rises.  We haven't even gotten much out of areas closer to the landfall area yet. I'm sure the updates will show plenty of devastation. Again. 

Ida's winds have now diminished, as that happens with all hurricanes that move inland. But it looks like it will continue creating a long stripe of flooding, some of it severe, all the way to New Jersey over the next couple of days.  The potential zone of nasty flooding includes Tennessee, where a devastating flash flood earlier this month killed about 20 people.. 

I can't even begin to imagine how stressful things were in Louisiana hospitals Sunday, and how stressful they'll continue to be. The hospitals are filled to the brim with Covid patients, and they all had to ride out the Ida Sunday.  

The roof of one Louisiana hospital is seen being ripped away in video posted on social media. No word yet on what's going on with the people who were in the hospital at the time.

These same hospitals will be slammed in the coming days with Ida-related injuries and illnesses and probably lots more  Covid cases. I don't even want to think about that anymore. 

One question I keep hearing is, "Why didn't people in harm's way evacuate? They knew Ida was coming.  Yes, there were some stubborn people that didn't leave despite warnings of unsurvivable storm surges and 150 mph winds.  

Hurricane Ida ripping the roof off of a hospital in

Louisiana Sunday. 

The bigger tragedy is that a lot of people didn't have the means to leave. They were essentially abandoned.  

If you don't have a car, or money to put gas in the car or money to get a hotel room or other shelter, you don't evacuate. All you can do is sit and hope for the best. Seems like there should have been some sort of system in place to give low income people the same chance at hurricane survival as those with more means.

But I guess poor people are dispensable.   I know that's harsh, and I shouldn't talk since I myself don't have a good plan in mind to help in these situations. But it just feels like we could do better.

Meanwhile, as Ida departs, people in Louisiana have a rough few weeks ahead of them.  Power will be out for weeks in some areas, which means no air conditioning. That's dangerous in a humid place like the Deep South.

The flood damage alone has to be immense, and will take months or even years to repair.  That's on top of the ongoing rebuilding from destructive hurricanes that hit Louisiana last year. Luckily, Hurricane Ida did not directly hit the areas that got nailed by three hurricanes last year. 

VERMONT IMPACTS

I wouldn't worry too much about Ida around here, at least at this point. 

Torrential showers that rolled through northern Vermont this morning had nothing to do with Ida, by the way.  The air has gotten very humid ahead of a cold front, so the pooled moisture made things ripe for downpours.  A disturbance ahead of the approaching cold front triggered those heavy showers.

The remains of Ida, as noted, will spread flooding rains through the Tennessee Valley and on into the Middle Atlantic States and probably southern New England. 

There's a lot of questions as to how far north those rains will get Wednesday night and Thursday.  Far southern Vermont in particular could get some drenching downpours from Ida, so we'll have to watch that.  The southern end of Vermont is still prone to flooding after a wet summer there.

Computer models are all over the place about the amount of rain and whether any of it gets as far as northern Vermont. Stay tuned.