The death toll in Louisiana from Hurricane Ida rose to 26 Wednesday, after health officials reported 11 additional deaths in New Orleans, mostly older people who perished from the heat. The announcement was grim news amid signs the city was returning to normal with almost fully restored power and a lifted nighttime curfew. While New Orleans was generally rebounding from the storm, hundreds of thousands of people outside the city remained without electricity and some of the hardest-hit areas still had no water. Across southeastern Louisiana, 250,000 students were unable to return to classrooms 10 days after Ida roared ashore with 150 mph (240 kph) winds. The latest deaths attributed to Ida happened between Aug. 30 and Monday, but were just confirmed as storm-related by the Orleans Parish coroner, the Louisiana Department of Health said in a statement. Nine of the New Orleans deaths — of people ages 64 to 79 — came from “excessive heat during an extended power outage,” while the two others were from carbon monoxide poisoning, the department said. More than a million people were left without power, including the entire city of New Orleans, when Ida struck on Aug. 29. The state’s largest power company, Entergy, said it expected to have electricity in the city restored to 90% by Wednesday evening. Read:New Orleans: Seniors left in dark, hot facilities after Ida Meanwhile, the New Orleans Police Department and Mayor LaToya Cantrell lifted an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew they had imposed two days after the hurricane hit. Across New Orleans and southeastern Louisiana, families are still waiting to hear when their children can return to school, as districts assessed hurricane damage. Prior to Ida, schools around Louisiana had been open despite widespread cases of COVID-19, although under a statewide mask mandate for all indoor locations. “We need to get those kids back with us as soon as we possibly can,” said Superintendent of Education Cade Brumley. In New Orleans, School Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. said damage to schools appeared to be mostly minimal, but power needs to be restored to all buildings, and teachers, staff and families need to return to the city to get schools up and running. “Now more than ever, our children stand to benefit from the comfort that structured and routine daily schooling can bring,” Lewis said in a statement Wednesday. “So, let’s all come together to reopen our schools quickly and safely.” Lewis said he expects classes for some will resume as early as next week and that all students will be back a week after that. No school reopening estimates have been provided for the five parishes that were hardest hit by Hurricane Ida and which are home to about 320,000 people: Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. James, St. Charles and St. John the Baptist. In those parishes, 96% of utility customers were still without power Wednesday. Bucket trucks and heavy power equipment were ubiquitous, but the task facing linemen remained daunting. Downed power poles and slack or snapped lines were still evident on long stretches of U.S. Highway 90 in St. Charles Parish. Heavy equipment trucks could be seen ferrying new poles to the area. Read: Outside of New Orleans, an even longer road to Ida recovery Farther south, in the Terrebonne Parish city of Houma, trucks with linemen were on every street, and as the day progressed there were signs of progress: Traffic lights started flickering on, although sporadically, on busy Grand Caillou road by early afternoon. Linemen also were working south of Houma, in rural Terrebonne along Bayou Grand Caillou. But many of the homes were in no shape to connect. Coy Verdin was staying at his son’s house in Houma. The home the 52-year-old fisherman shares with his wife, Pamela, near the bayou was a soggy, smelly mess, all but destroyed in the storm. “All the ceilings fell. You can see daylight through the roof,” Verdin said. “All we have is basically a shell.” Ida scattered most of his 200 crab traps to parts unknown. “The only thing I have left is my boat and some of my commercial fishing rigging,” he said. The St. John the Baptist Parish School System website said all schools and offices will be closed “until further notification.” Lafourche Parish Schools Superintendent Jarod Martin indicated a “long and extensive road to recovery” on that school system’s website, with no timeline for a return in sight. “Until power is restored to our facilities and we’re able to obtain further information regarding damage to the infrastructure of our schools, we’re unable to provide an estimated date for a return to in-person learning,” the St. James Parish public school system said in an update posted Wednesday. Statewide, about 342,000 homes and businesses remained without power Wednesday, according to the Louisiana Public Service Commission. Access to fuel also remained difficult, with the website GasBuddy.com reporting about 48% of gas stations in Baton Rouge had no gasoline. About 56% of stations in New Orleans were also dry. Read: Cleanup boats on scene of large Gulf oil spill following Ida About 44,000 people were still without running water in Louisiana, the state health department reported. That’s significantly lower than the hundreds of thousands of people who had no water immediately after Ida’s landfall. Still, more than 570,000 people were being told to boil their water for safety. In many neighborhoods, homes remain uninhabitable. About 3,200 people are in mass shelters around Louisiana while another 25,000 people whose houses have been damaged are staying in hotel rooms through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s transitional sheltering program. Louisiana’s secretary of state announced that fall elections will be pushed back by more than a month because of the storm. In addition to the death and destruction Ida caused in Louisiana, the storm’s remnants brought historic flooding, record rains and tornados from Virginia to Massachusetts, killing at least 50 more people.

The coronavirus pandemic claimed Kendall Duthu’s job as a cook at a jambalaya restaurant. Then Hurricane Ida claimed his house. The 26-year-old resident of Dulac, Louisiana, is now living out of his car with his girlfriend after Ida roared ashore a week ago Sunday, splintering homes in its path. Now he doesn’t know what’s next. On Saturday, Duthu collected a container of red beans and rice from volunteers in nearby Houma who handed out ice, water and meals to shell-shocked storm survivors. He stopped to eat inside his Infiniti, its windshield shattered. “Next stop, I don’t really ...” he said, trailing off. “We’ve just been living day by day.” Read: Cleanup boats on scene of large Gulf oil spill following Ida Both Dulac and Houma are in Terrebonne Parish, among the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered to an unprecedented degree by Hurricane Ida. Though Louisiana’s largest electric utility, Entergy, estimates most residents in New Orleans will have power by Wednesday, recovery efforts outside of the city could be a much longer slog. Meanwhile, residents continue to face food, water and gas shortages while battling heat and humidity. Some parishes outside New Orleans were battered for hours by winds of 100 mph (160 kph) or more. Fully restoring electricity to some of these southeastern parishes could take until the end of the month, according to Entergy President and CEO Phillip May. Ida damaged or destroyed more than 22,000 power poles, more than hurricanes Katrina, Zeta and Delta combined, an impact May called “staggering.” More than 5,200 transformers failed and nearly 26,000 spans of wire — the stretch of transmission wires between poles — were down. By Saturday morning, power was restored to about 282,000 customers from the peak of 902,000 who lost power after Ida. Outside of Dulac, 45-year-old shrimper Jay Breaux stood in front of his home, snapped open by the storm. Breaux could see a bed exposed through a cratered wall and a lawn chair dangling from the debris. But he smiled widely, saying his family wasn’t doing as badly as others. “It don’t pay to cry about it,” he said of Ida, the latest storm to hit his small town along the bayou. “I got 10 or 12 of them things under my belt. But this one here is the worst.” Read: Searches, sorrow in wake of Ida’s destructive, deadly floods At least 16 deaths were blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In the Northeast, Ida’s remnants dumped record-breaking rain and killed at least 50 people from Virginia to Connecticut. Louisiana’s 12 storm-related deaths included five nursing home residents evacuated ahead of the hurricane along with hundreds of other seniors to a warehouse in Louisiana, where health officials said conditions became unsafe. On Saturday evening, State Health Officer Dr. Joseph Kanter ordered the immediate closure of the seven nursing facilities that sent residents to the Tangipahoa Parish warehouse facility. “The lack of regard for these vulnerable residents’ wellbeing is an affront to human dignity. We have lost trust in these nursing homes to provide adequate care for their residents,” Kanter said. As recovery efforts continued, state officials were monitoring a system of disturbed weather in Mexico’s Bay of Campeche, which appeared set to move into the central Gulf of Mexico closer to Louisiana. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Saturday the state is planning an exercise to assess its emergency response if needed. Predictions so far don’t show the system strengthening into a hurricane, but he said “even if it’s a tropical storm, we’re in no state to receive that much rainfall at this time.” “We can’t take the playbook we normally use because the people and assets are no longer where they would have been,” Edwards said. “How do you staff up shelters you need for the new storm and continue to test for COVID? My head’s getting painful just thinking about it. ... We will be as ready as we can be, but I’m praying we don’t have to deal with that.” The lower Mississippi River reopened to all vessel traffic in New Orleans and key ports throughout southeastern Louisiana after power lines from a downed transmission tower were removed, the U.S. Coast Guard said. Read:More than 45 dead after Ida’s remnants blindside Northeast USA New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city would offer transportation starting Saturday to any resident looking to leave the city and get to a public shelter. By the end of Saturday, city agencies conducting wellness checks had evacuated hundreds of people out of eight senior living complexes where officials deemed conditions unfit for living. The coroner’s office is investigating four post-storm deaths that occurred at three of those facilities. In suburban New Orleans, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto urged people “to calm down” as he announced Saturday that a man wanted in the shooting death a day earlier of another man during a dispute in a line at a gas station was in custody. Meanwhile Saturday, Coast Guard cleanup crews were responding to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following the storm. The spill, which is ongoing, appears to be coming from an underwater source at an offshore drilling lease about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana.

Louisiana communities battered by Hurricane Ida faced a new danger as they began the massive task of clearing debris and repairing damage from the storm: the possibility of weeks without power in the stifling, late-summer heat. Ida ravaged the region’s power grid, leaving the entire city of New Orleans and hundreds of thousands of other Louisiana residents in the dark with no clear timeline on when power would return. Some areas outside New Orleans also suffered major flooding and structure damage. “There are certainly more questions than answers. I can’t tell you when the power is going to be restored. I can’t tell you when all the debris is going to be cleaned up and repairs made,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards told a news conference Monday. “But what I can tell you is we are going to work hard every day to deliver as much assistance as we can.” President Joe Biden met virtually on Monday with Bel Edwards and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves along with mayors from cities and parishes most impacted by Hurricane Ida to receive an update on the storm’s impacts, and to discuss how the Federal Government can provide assistance. Read:Hurricane Ida traps Louisianans, shatters the power grid “We are closely coordinating with state and local officials every step of the way,” Biden said. Rescuers in boats, helicopters and high-water trucks brought hundreds of people trapped by floodwaters to safety Monday, and they planned to eventually go door to door in hard hit areas to make sure everyone got out OK. Power crews also rushed into the state. The governor said 25,000 utility workers were on the ground in Louisiana to help restore electricity, with more on the way. Still, his office described damage to the power grid as “catastrophic,” and power officials said it could be weeks before electricity is restored in some spots. More than 1 million homes and businesses in Louisiana and Mississippi were left without power as Ida pushed through on Sunday with winds that reached 150 mph (240 kph). The wind speed tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to hit the mainland. By late Monday, the storm had been downgraded to a tropical depression with winds of up to 35 mph (56 kph), though forecasters still warned of heavy rain and a flood threat for parts of the Tennessee and Ohio valleys. The storm was blamed for at least two deaths — a motorist who drowned in New Orleans and a person hit by a falling tree outside Baton Rouge. Pamela Mitchell said Monday she was thinking about leaving New Orleans until power returned, but her 14-year-old daughter, Michelle, was determined to stay and was preparing to clean out the fridge and put perishables in an ice chest. Read: Ida downs New Orleans power on deadly path through Louisiana Mitchell had already spent a hot and frightening night at home while Ida’s winds shrieked, and she thought the family could tough it out. “We went a week before, with Zeta,” she said, recalling an outage during the hurricane that hit the city last fall. Other residents of the city were relying on generators — or neighbors who had them. Hank Fanberg said both of his neighbors had offered him access to their generators. He also had a plan for food. “I have a gas grill and charcoal grill,” he said. The hurricane blew ashore on the 16th anniversary of Katrina, the 2005 storm that breached New Orleans’ levees, devastated the city and was blamed for 1,800 deaths. This time, New Orleans escaped the catastrophic flooding some had feared. But city officials still urged people who evacuated to stay away for at least a couple of days because of the lack of power and fuel. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued emergency fuel waivers for Louisiana and Mississippi, effective immediately, on Monday night. It will end on Sept. 16. Read: No cash or gas to run from Ida: ‘We can’t afford to leave’ Some places were also dealing with water problems. Eighteen water systems were out, impacting more than 312,000 people, and an additional 14 systems affecting another 329,000 people were under boil water advisories, Edwards said Monday. The hurricane twisted and collapsed a giant tower that carries key transmission lines over the Mississippi River to the New Orleans area, causing widespread outages, Entergy and local authorities said. The power company said more than 2,000 miles of transmission lines were out of service, along with 216 substations. The tower had survived Katrina. The storm also flattened utility poles, toppled trees onto power lines and caused transformers to explode. In Mississippi’s southwestern corner, entire neighborhoods were surrounded by floodwaters, and many roads were impassable. Several tornadoes were reported, including a suspected twister in Saraland, Alabama, that ripped part of the roof off a motel and flipped an 18-wheeler, injuring the driver, according to the National Weather Service.

Rescuers set out in hundreds of boats and helicopters to reach people trapped by floodwaters and utility crews mobilized Monday after a furious Hurricane Ida swamped the Louisiana coast and made a shambles of the electrical grid in the sticky, late-summer heat. One of the most powerful hurricanes ever to hit the U.S. mainland weakened into a tropical storm overnight as it pushed inland over Mississippi with torrential rain and shrieking winds, its danger far from over. Ida was blamed for at least one death — someone hit by a falling tree outside Baton Rouge. But with many roads impassable and cellphone service knocked out in places, the full extent of its fury was still coming into focus. Christina Stephens, a spokesperson for Gov. John Bel Edwards, said that given the level of destruction, “We’re going to have many more confirmed fatalities.”The governor’s office said damage to the power grid appeared “catastrophic.” And officials warned it could be weeks before power is fully restored. “For the most part, all of our levees performed extremely well -- especially the federal levees -- but at the end of the day, the storm surge, the rain, the wind all had devastating impacts,” Edwards said. “We have tremendous damage to homes and to businesses.”All of New Orleans lost power right around sunset Sunday as the hurricane blew ashore on the 16th anniversary of Katrina, leading to an uneasy night of pouring rain and howling wind. When daylight came, streets were littered with tree branches and some roads were blocked. While it was still early, there were no immediate reports of the catastrophic flooding city officials had feared. “I had a long miserable night,” said Chris Atkins, who was in his New Orleans home when he heard a “kaboom” and all the sheetrock in the living room fell into the house. A short time later, the whole side of the living room fell onto his neighbor’s driveway. “Lucky the whole thing didn’t fall inward. It would have killed us,” he said. The misery isn’t over for many. Stephanie Blaise returned to her home with her father in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans after evacuating. It only lost some shingles. But without power and no idea when electricity would be restored, she didn’t plan to stay long. “We don’t need to go through that. I’m going to have to convince him to leave. We got to go somewhere. Can’t stay in this heat,” she said. Four Louisiana hospitals were damaged and 39 medical facilities were operating on generator power, the Federal Emergency Management Agency said. Officials said they were evacuating scores of patients to other cities. The governor’s office said over 2,200 evacuees were staying in 41 shelters as of Monday morning, a number expected to rise as people were rescued or escaped from flooded homes. Stephens said the state will work to move people to hotels as soon as possible so that they can keep their distance from one another. “This is a COVID nightmare,” she said, adding: “We do anticipate that we could see some COVID spikes related to this.” Interstate 10 between New Orleans and Baton Rouge — the main east-west route along the Gulf Coast — was closed because of flooding, with the water reported to be 4 feet deep at one spot, officials said. READ: 1st death from Hurricane Ida; power out across New Orleans Preliminary measurements showed Slidell, Louisiana, got at least 15.7 inches of rain, while New Orleans received nearly 14 inches, forecasters said. Other parts of Louisiana and Mississippi, Alabama and Florida got 5 to 11 inches. Amid the maze of rivers and bayous around the New Orleans area, people retreated to their attics or rooftops and posted their addresses on social media with instructions for search-and-rescue teams on where to find them.The Louisiana National Guard said it activated 4,900 Guard personnel and lined up 195 high-water vehicles, 73 rescue boats and 34 helicopters. Local and state agencies were adding hundreds of more. Jefferson Parish in suburban New Orleans knew of 500 people who said they were going to stay in areas that were flooded, and it began sending out dozens of boats, Parish Council member Deano Bonano told WWL-TV. More than a million customers in Louisiana and Mississippi were without power, according to PowerOutage.US, which tracks outages nationwide. That left them without air conditioning and refrigeration in the dog days of summer, with highs forecast in the mid-80s on Monday, climbing to nearly 90 by Wednesday. The hurricane twisted and collapsed a giant tower that carries key transmission lines over the Mississippi River to the New Orleans area, causing widespread outages, Entergy and local authorities said. The power company said more than 2,000 miles of transmission lines were out of service, along with 216 substations. The storm also flattened utility poles and brought trees down onto power lines. “We don’t know if the damage is something we can get up quickly,” Entergy New Orleans CEO Deanna Rodriguez told WWL-TV. The governor said on Sunday that 30,000 utility workers were in the state to help restore electricity. AT&T’s phone system was down all across southeastern Louisiana. Many people resorted to using walkie-talkies. The governor’s office staff had no working phones. People who evacuated struggled to check on those who didn’t leave. Charchar Chaffold left from her home near LaPlace, Louisiana, for Alabama after a tree fell on her place on Sunday. She frantically tried to get in touch with five family members who stayed behind. She last heard from them Sunday night. They were in the attic after water rushed into their home. Chaffold tried texting, but she didn’t know if their phones were dead and or service was out. “They told me they they thought they was going to die, I told them they are not and called for help,” Chaffold said. Farther south, emergency officials had not heard from Grand Isle since Sunday afternoon. About 40 people stayed on the barrier island, which took the brunt of the hurricane and was swamped by seawater, Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng told NBC. Ida’s 150 mph (230 kph) winds tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to hit the mainland. Its winds were down to 45 mph (72 kph) early Monday. In Mississippi’s southwestern corner, entire neighborhoods were surrounded by floodwaters, and many roads were impassable. READ: Powerful Hurricane Ida closing in on Louisiana landfall Ida was expected to pick up speed Monday night before dumping rain on the Tennessee and Ohio River valleys Tuesday, the Appalachian mountain region Wednesday and the nation’s capital on Thursday. Forecasters said flash flooding and mudslides are possible along Ida’s path before it blows out to sea over New England on Friday.

Robert Owens was feeling defeated and helpless Sunday as he waited in Louisiana’s capital city for landfall by one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to strike the U.S. The 27-year-old had spent anxious days watching long lines of cars evacuating from Baton Rouge, bound for safer locations out of state as Hurricane Ida approached. He had hoped he and his wife, his mother-in-law, roommate and four pets would be among them. But leaving would have required money for gas and a hotel room — something they didn’t have. Out of desperation, Owens went to ACE Cash Express on Saturday and submitted documents for a payday loan. He was denied, told he didn’t have enough credit history. By Sunday, it was clear they would be riding out the storm at home in his family’s duplex apartment. Read: 1st death from Hurricane Ida; power out across New Orleans “Our bank account is empty – we can’t afford to leave,” he said. Owens said the majority of people in his low-income neighborhood are in the same predicament. They want to leave to protect families, but have no choice but to stay. “A lot of us here in my neighborhood have to just hunker down and wait, not knowing how bad it’s going to get. It’s a terrifying feeling,” he said. “There people who have funds to lean on are able to get out of here, but there’s a big chunk of people that are lower-income that don’t have a savings account to fall on,” he continued. “We’re left behind.” By Sunday night at 9 p.m., Owens said his family and all others in his neighborhood had lost power. The sky was lighting up green from transformers blowing up all around them, he said. Several trees had collapsed on neighbor’s properties, but it was too dark to see the full extent of the damage. Owens said they were trying to use a flashlight to survey the street, but were wary of jeopardizing their safety. Read: Powerful Hurricane Ida closing in on Louisiana landfall “Never in my life have I encountered something this major,” he said as giant gusts rattled his home’s windows. He said there were a few times when it sounded like the roof of his duplex might come off. He said his wife was packing a bag of clothes and essentials, just in case. “We’ll shelter in the car if we lose the house,” he said. The family all share his wife’s Toyota Avalon, a vehicle “not nearly big enough” to shelter four people, three dogs and a cat. Earlier in the day, Owens said he was hurriedly placing towels under leaking windows in his duplex and charging electronics. He tried to go to Dollar General and Dollar Tree to pick up food, but they were closed. His family has lights glued around the walls of the house. They planned to hide in the laundry room or the kitchen when the storm hits -- places without windows. “There’s a general feeling of fear in not knowing what’s going to be the aftermath of this,” he said. “That’s the most concerning thing. Like, what are we going to do if it gets really bad? Will we still be alive? Is a tree going fall on top of us?” Read: Tropical Storm Ida a hurricane menace to New Orleans Owens said his mother-in-law is on disability. His roommates both work for Apple iOS tech support. His wife works scheduling blood donations. All of them rely on the internet to work from home, and if it goes out, they won’t be able to bring in any money. “We might be without work, and rent, power, water, all of those bills will still be needing to get paid,” he said. “We are a little bit concerned about losing our utilities or even our house — if it’s still standing — because we’re not going to have the money for any other bills.” He said it’s hard to feel so vulnerable, like his family is getting left behind. “The fact that we are not middle class or above, it just kind of keeps coming back to bite us over and over again, in so many different directions and ways — a simple pay-day advance being one of them,” he said. “It’s like we’re having to pay for being poor, even though we’re trying to not be poor.”

Hurricane Ida crossed the Gulf of Mexico on track for a potentially devastating landfall on the Louisiana coast Sunday, while emergency officials in the region grappled with opening shelters for displaced evacuees despite the risks of spreading the coronavirus. The National Hurricane Center predicted Ida could be an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane with 130 mph (209 kph) winds when it makes an expected afternoon landfall. The storm arrived on the exact date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier. Ida was a Category 2 hurricane Saturday night with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (168 kph). The storm was centered about 235 miles (375 kilometers) southeast of coastal Houma, Louisiana, and was traveling northwest at 16 mph (26 kph). The storm threatened a region already reeling from a resurgence of COVID-19 infections, thanks to low vaccination rates and the highly contagious delta variant. Read: Tropical Storm Ida a hurricane menace to New Orleans New Orleans hospitals planned to ride out the storm with their beds nearly full, as similarly stressed hospitals elsewhere had little room for evacuated patients. And shelters for those fleeing their homes carried an added risk of becoming flashpoints for new infections. Gov. John Bel Edwards vowed Saturday that Louisiana’s “resilient and tough people” would weather the storm. He also noted shelters would operate with reduced capacities “to reflect the realities of COVID.” Edwards said Louisiana officials were already working to find hotel rooms for many evacuees so that fewer had to stay in mass shelters. He noted that during last year’s hurricane season, Louisiana found rooms for 20,000 people. “So, we know how to do this,” Edwards said. “I hope and pray we don’t have to do it anywhere near that extent.” In coastal Gulfport, Mississippi, a Red Cross shelter posted signs displaying directions for evacuees along with warnings about COVID-19. With skies still sunny, only a handful of people had shown up Saturday evening. Shelter manager Barbara Casterlin said workers were required to wear face masks. Evacuees were encouraged to do the same. Anyone who refuses will be sent to an isolated area, she said, and so will people who are sick. “We’re not checking vaccinations,” Casterlin said, “but we are doing temperature checks two or three times a day.” President Joe Biden approved emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi ahead of Ida’s arrival. Read: Henri hurls rain as storm settles atop swamped Northeast Comparisons to the Aug. 29, 2005, landfall of Katrina weighed heavily on residents bracing for Ida. A Category 3 storm, Katrina was blamed for 1,800 deaths as it demolished oceanfront homes in Mississippi and caused levee breaches and catastrophic flooding in New Orleans. In Saucier, Mississippi, Alex and Angela Bennett spent Saturday afternoon filling sand bags to place around their flood-prone home. Both survived Katrina, and didn’t expect Ida to cause nearly as much destruction where they live, based on forecasts. “Katrina was terrible. This ain’t gonna be nothing,” Alex Bennett said. “I hate it for Louisiana, but I’m happy for us.” Long lines formed at gas pumps Saturday as people rushed to escape. Trucks pulling saltwater fishing boats and campers streamed away from the coast on Interstate 65 in Alabama, while traffic jams clogged Interstate 10 heading out of New Orleans. Ida intensified so swiftly that New Orleans officials said there was no time to organize a mandatory evacuation of its 390,000 residents. Mayor LaToya Cantrell urged residents to leave voluntarily. Those who stayed were warned to prepare for long power outages amid sweltering heat. Officials also stressed that the levee and drainage systems protecting the city had been much improved since Katrina. But they cautioned flooding was still possible with up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) of rain forecast in some areas. Edwards said 5,000 National Guard troops were being staged in 14 Louisiana parishes for search and rescue efforts. And 10,000 linemen were on standby to respond to electrical outages. Read: Rescuers racing in Haiti as storm threatens to follow quake Ida posed a threat far beyond New Orleans. A hurricane warning was issued for nearly 200 miles (320 kilometers) of Louisiana’s coastline, from Intracoastal City south of Lafayette to the Mississippi state line. A tropical storm warning was extended to the Alabama-Florida line. Meteorologist Jeff Masters, who flew hurricane missions for the government and founded Weather Underground, said Ida is forecast to move through “the just absolute worst place for a hurricane.” The Interstate 10 corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is a critical hub of the nation’s petrochemical industry, lined with oil refineries, natural gas terminals and chemical manufacturing plants. Entergy, Louisiana’s major electricity provider, operates two nuclear power plants along the Mississippi River. A U.S. Energy Department map of oil and gas infrastructure shows scores of low-lying sites in the storm’s projected path that are listed as potentially vulnerable to flooding.

The rapidly escalating surge in COVID-19 infections across the U.S. has caused a shortage of nurses and other front-line staff in virus hot spots that can no longer keep up with the flood of unvaccinated patients and are losing workers to burnout and lucrative out-of-state temporary gigs. Florida, Arkansas, Louisiana and Oregon all have more people hospitalized with COVID-19 than at any other point in the pandemic, and nursing staffs are badly strained. In Florida, virus cases have filled so many hospital beds that ambulance services and fire departments are straining to respond to emergencies. Some patients wait inside ambulances for up to an hour before hospitals in St. Petersburg, Florida, can admit them — a process that usually takes about 15 minutes, Pinellas County Administrator Barry Burton said. One person who suffered a heart attack was bounced from six hospitals before finding an emergency room in New Orleans that could take him in, said Joe Kanter, Louisiana’s chief public health officer. Read:COVID vaccines to be required for military under new US plan “It’s a real dire situation,” Kanter said. “There’s just not enough qualified staff in the state right now to care for all these patients.” Michelle Thomas, a registered nurse and a manager of the emergency department at a Tucson, Arizona, hospital, resigned three weeks ago after hitting a wall. “There was never a time that we could just kind of take a breath,” Thomas said Tuesday. “I hit that point … I can’t do this anymore. I’m so just tapped out.” She helped other nurses cope with being alone in rooms with dying patients and holding mobile phones so family members could say their final goodbyes. “It’s like incredibly taxing and traumatizing,” said Thomas, who is unsure if she will ever return to nursing. Miami’s Jackson Memorial Health System, Florida’s largest medical provider, has been losing nurses to staffing agencies, other hospitals and pandemic burnout, Executive Vice President Julie Staub said. The hospital’s CEO says nurses are being lured away to jobs in other states at double and triple the salary. Staub said system hospitals have started paying retention bonuses to nurses who agree to stay for a set period. To cover shortages, nurses who agree to work extra are getting the typical time-and-a-half for overtime plus $500 per additional 12-hour shift. Even with that, the hospital sometimes still has to turn to agencies to fill openings. “You are seeing folks chase the dollars,” Staub said. “If they have the flexibility to pick up and go somewhere else and live for a week, months, whatever and make more money, it is a very enticing thing to do. I think every health care system is facing that.” Nearly 70% of Florida hospitals are expecting critical staffing shortages in the next week, according to the Florida Hospital Association. In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown announced Tuesday that state employees must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18 or six weeks after a COVID-19 vaccine receives full federal approval, whichever is later. Her office planned to announce a statewide indoor mask requirement on Wednesday. “Oregon is facing a spike in COVID-19 hospitalizations — consisting overwhelmingly of unvaccinated individuals — that is quickly exceeding the darkest days of our winter surge,” Brown said. “When our hospitals are full, there will be no room for additional patients needing care.” Read:US now averaging 100,000 new COVID-19 infections a day Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday directed state officials to use staffing agencies to find additional medical staff from beyond the state’s borders as the delta variant overwhelms its present staffing resources. He also has sent a letter to the Texas Hospital Association to request that hospitals postpone all elective medical procedures voluntarily. Parts of Europe have so far avoided a similar hospital crisis, despite wide circulation of the delta variant, with help from vaccines. The United Kingdom on Monday had more than 5,900 COVID-19 patients in hospitals, but the latest surge has not overwhelmed medical centers. As of Tuesday, the government said 75 percent of adults have been fully vaccinated. The same was true in Italy, where the summer infections have not resulted in any spike in hospital admissions, intensive care admissions or deaths. About 3,200 people in the nation of 60 million were hospitalized Tuesday in regular wards or ICUs, according to Health Ministry figures. Italian health authorities advising the government on the pandemic attribute the relatively contained hospital numbers to the nation’s inoculation campaign, which has fully vaccinated 64.5% of Italians 12 years of age or older. The U.S. is averaging more than 116,000 new coronavirus infections a day along with about 50,000 hospitalizations, levels not experienced since the winter surge. Unlike other points in the pandemic, hospitals now have more non-COVID patients for everything from car accidents to surgeries that were postponed during the outbreak. That has put even more burden on nurses who were already fatigued after dealing with constant death among patients and illnesses in their ranks. “Anecdotally, I’m seeing more and more nurses say, ‘I’m leaving, I’ve had enough,’” said Gerard Brogan, director of nursing practice with National Nurses United, an umbrella organization of nurses unions across the U.S. “’The risk to me and my family is just too much.’” Hawaii is seeing more new daily virus cases than ever. In a Honolulu hospital’s emergency department, patients have had to wait for beds for more than 24 hours on gurneys in a curtained-off section because there’s not enough staff to open more beds, nurse Patrick Switzer said. “Somebody who’s been sitting in the emergency room for 30 hours is miserable,” he said. He described being “in this constant state of anxiety, knowing that you don’t have the tools that you need to take care of your patients because we’re stretched so thin.” Read:Shots give COVID-19 survivors big immune boost, studies show COVID-19 hospitalizations have now surpassed the pandemic’s worst previous surge in Florida, with no signs of letting up, setting a record of 13,600 on Monday, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. More than 2,800 required intensive care. At the height of last year’s summer surge, there were more than 10,170 COVID-19 hospitalizations. At Westside Regional Medical Center in Plantation, Florida, the number of COVID-19 patients has doubled each week for the past month, wearing down the already short staff, said Penny Ceasar, who handles admissions there. The hospital has converted overflow areas to accommodate the rise in admissions. Some staffers have fallen ill with COVID-19. “It’s just hard. We’re just tired. I just want this thing over,” Ceasar said.

Divers searching the site of a capsized lift boat off Louisiana recovered two more unresponsive crewmembers late Friday, the Coast Guard said after another day of frantic waiting by family members worried for the fate of those who went missing earlier this week. Petty Officer Jonathan Lally, a Coast Guard spokesman, declined to elaborate on the latest two found and referred questions from The Associated Press to a local coroner. A Coast Guard statement said commercial divers on the capsized Seacor Power lift boat found the crewmembers. But the Coast Guard said it was not releasing the names of any of those rescued, recovered or still missing out of respect for the privacy of their families. “Our deepest sympathy goes out to the family, friends and loved ones of everyone involved in this tragic incident,” said Capt. Will Watson, commander of Coast Guard Sector New Orleans. “We are using every asset available to us to continue our search efforts.” Rescuers in the air and the sea have been searching for the 19 workers who were aboard the vessel, which is designed to support offshore oil rigs, when it overturned Tuesday in rough weather about 8 miles (13 kilometers) south of the Louisiana coast. Nine remain missing. “Right now, we’re hoping for a miracle,” said Steven Walcott, brother of missing worker Gregory Walcott. Also read: Capsized ship off Louisiana: 12 missing, 1 dead, 6 rescued Six people were rescued Tuesday shortly after the vessel capsized, and one body was recovered from the water Wednesday. A second body was found Thursday night, according to a Coast Guard news release. The boat has three legs designed to extend to the sea floor and raise the ship so it can serve as a platform for nearby rigs. The hope of loved ones is that those still missing have found air pockets to survive inside the ship. But authorities haven’t reported any contact with anyone inside the ship since Tuesday. On Thursday, searchers knocked on the ship’s hull without response. Meanwhile, feelings of shock and worry were turning to frustration and anger for families of the missing. “It just keeps going on and on,” said Frank Boeckl, whose nephew, Larry Warren, was among the missing workers. “They need more divers in that water, and every family feels this way. It’s not just me.” Time is of the essence because any air pockets will eventually become depleted of oxygen, said Mauritius Bell, diving safety officer at the California Academy of Sciences: “At some point, it’s not survivable.” Also Read: Launch Capsize in Sitalakkhya: Death toll jumps to 26 Divers had gone into the water Friday but came back up at mid-morning as the weather became too dangerous to continue, the Coast Guard said in a news release. They then resumed diving Friday afternoon, and the Coast Guard said they would continue the searching through the evening, weather permitting. Steven Walcott said the dive teams should have been working around the clock from the start. “It was more complicated than it should have been,” said Walcott, who like his brother has worked on lift boats for more than 20 years. But he said he was trying to remain optimistic, knowing his brother would do what he needed to survive, but it was getting harder with each passing day. “We’re just keeping hope,” he said. Two of the missing workers had been communicating with rescuers by two-way radio Tuesday after the ungainly platform ship flipped over in hurricane-force winds that day. They were spotted clinging to the overturned hull but returned to seek shelter inside after a third man fell into the water and was lost. Lafourche Parish Coroner John King identified the second lift boat worker found dead as 69-year-old Ernest Williams of Arnaudville, according to The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate. The other person found dead was David Ledet, a 63-year-old captain from Thibodaux Relatives of the missing have gathered at Port Fourchon, a sprawling base for much of the offshore oil and gas industry in the Gulf of Mexico. The port, busy with cranes, cargo and heavy equipment, is where workers from across Louisiana and beyond load up on a fleet of helicopters and ships that take them to the rigs for long stretches of work. “It’s nerve-wracking” for relatives waiting for news, said Chett Chiasson, executive director of the Lafourche Parish port, where families of the workers gathered Friday for a briefing on rescue efforts. “Obviously there’s some frustration there, not knowing about their loved one and not hearing from their loved one,” he said. At the same time, he said: “There’s still some hope there.”  

Coast Guard boats and aircraft have covered an area larger than the state of Rhode Island to search for 12 people still missing Wednesday off the Louisiana coast after their offshore oilfield vessel capsized in hurricane-force winds. One worker’s body was recovered Wednesday and six people were rescued Tuesday after the Seacor Power overturned Tuesday afternoon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Coast Guard said. The search, interrupted by darkness and bad weather, has totaled nearly 40 hours and more than 1,440 square miles (3,730 square kilometers) of Gulf waters by Wednesday afternoon, according to a news release. The hunt for the missing continued into the evening, said Petty Officer Carlos Galarza. Coast Guard Capt. Will Watson said earlier that winds were 80 to 90 mph (130 to 145 kph) and waves rose 7 to 9 feet high (2.1 to 2.7 meters) when the lift boat overturned. “That’s challenging under any circumstance,” Watson said. “We don’t know the degree to which that contributed to what happened, but we do know those are challenging conditions to be out in the maritime environment.” Also Read: Launch Capsize in Sitalakkhya: Death toll jumps to 26 The bulky vessel, also called a jackup rig because it has three long legs it can lower to the sea floor to lift the boat out of the water as an offshore platform, flipped over Tuesday afternoon south of Port Fourchon, a major base for the U.S. oil and gas industry. One worker was found dead on the surface of the water, Watson said at a news conference Wednesday. Asked about the missing workers’ prospects, he said, “We are hopeful. We can’t do this work if you’re not optimistic, if you’re not hopeful.” Divers were heading to the local area Wednesday afternoon, Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer John Micheli said. Numerous other agencies helped with the search. Marion Cuyler, the fiancée of crane operator Chaz Morales, was waiting with family of other missing workers at a Port Fourchon fire station near a landing site where helicopters were coming and going. She said she talked to her fiancé before he left Tuesday. “He said that they were jacking down and they were about to head out, and I’m like, ‘The weather’s too bad. You need to come home.’ And he’s like, ‘I wish I could.’” Also Read: Launch with 50 passengers capsizes in Shitalakkhya The relationship of those on board to owner Seacor Marine was not immediately clear. The boat, capable of working in up to 195 feet (nearly 60 meters) of water, can carry a crew of 12, two “special personnel” and 36 passengers, according to the company website. “We are deeply saddened by the news of the vessel capsizing and are working closely with the U.S. Coast Guard and local authorities to support all efforts to locate our valued team members and partners,” the Houston-based company said in a statement. Watson said the Coast Guard is investigating what part the harsh weather played in the accident. The vessel left Port Fourchon at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, bound for Main Pass off the southeast Louisiana coast, he said. “We did have some weather reports yesterday that there would be some challenging weather. But this level of weather was not necessarily anticipated,” he said. The National Weather Service in New Orleans issued a special marine warning before 4 p.m. Tuesday that predicted steep waves and winds greater than 50 knots (58 mph). The Coast Guard received a distress message from a good Samaritan at 4:30 p.m. and issued an urgent marine broadcast that prompted multiple private vessels in the area to respond, saving four people, the agency said. Coast Guard crews rescued another two people. At one point, video showed the boat — 129 feet (39 meters) long at its beam — with one leg pointed awkwardly skyward as rescuers searched the heaving water. Although the Coast Guard said the lift boat capsized during a microburst, a National Weather Service meteorologist said the system was more like an offshore derecho — or straight winds storm. “This was not a microburst -- just a broad straight-line wind event that swept over a huge area,” Phil Grigsby said. He said the weather service’s nearest official gauge, at Grand Isle, showed about 30 minutes of 75 mph (120 km/h) winds, followed by hours of winds over 50 mph (80 km/h). The initial storm system was followed by a low-pressure system called a wake low, which amplified the winds and made them last longer, Grigsby said. “It was the strongest wake low I’ve seen in almost 18 years here,” he said. Shrimp boat captain Aaron Callais said the bad weather started with small, quickly dissipating waterspouts that buffeted his father’s boat, the Ramblin’ Cajun. “There was nothing we could do. One minute we were facing north, the next south, then east and west,” he said. “Things were flying in the cabin.′ Callais posted video on Facebook of wind battering the boat as he talked on the boat’s satellite phone to friends and family, including his dad, “letting him know the situation, that it wasn’t looking good. We didn’t know if we were going to make it out.”    

Hurricane Laura made landfall in southwestern Louisiana as a ferocious Category 4 monster with 150 mph winds early Thursday, swamping a low-lying coast with ocean water that forecasters said could be 20 feet deep and unsurvivable.