Hurricane Ida has been downgraded to a tropical depression, after it hit the Louisiana coast Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. On Monday, it continued to bring torrential rain and flooding to Louisiana and southern Mississippi, where two people died when a flooded highway collapsed. Louisiana’s main utility company, Entergy, says it could be weeks before it restores electricity to nearly a million people in the storm’s path, including all of New Orleans, as temperatures rise to near 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
Meanwhile, the New Orleans Police Department drew criticism for diverting resources from helping vulnerable residents to sending out what it called “anti-looting” officers. Some of this recalled the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when the media and police spread misinformation that left people stranded without basic necessities as more than 1,800 people died in Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath.
You know, my family and I decided to relocate because we are natives of Louisiana. And what you’re going to find time and time again is that Louisianans know and understand how to take care of themselves. There’s a lot of wisdom on the ground. We understood the science of this storm. We understand that climate is driving the severity of these weather events — and we could talk some more about that. And so we knew it was going to be a dangerous storm. So it made sense for us, and we have the privilege of having the resources and family and friends who could take us in, here in Katy, Texas, so that we could roll up our sleeves and start to get to the business of doing the work to not only do emergency response from the perspective of social justice philanthropy, but also begin to build out a just and fair recovery from Hurricane Ida.
— source democracynow.org | Aug 31, 2021