Residents of southern Louisiana still recovering from Hurricane Ida just weeks ago were bracing Wednesday for expected heavy rains as Nicholas crawls across parts of the state from Texas. Nicholas made landfall as a hurricane early Tuesday on the Texas coast, dumping heavy rain even though it was quickly downgraded to a tropical storm and later a depression. But forecasters said Nicholas could stall over storm-battered Louisiana and spread life-threatening floods across the Deep South over the coming days. In a state still recovering from Category 4 storm Ida weeks ago — as well as Category 4 Laura a year ago — Nicholas and its potentially heavy rain bands were unwelcome news. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards warned residents to expect flash flooding and to take the storm seriously despite its lack of hurricane status. Read: Nicholas strengthens to hurricane ahead of Texas landfall “This is a very serious storm, particularly in those areas that were so heavily impacted by Hurricane Ida,” Edwards said. Galveston, Texas, recorded nearly 14 inches (35 centimeters) of rain from Nicholas, the 14th named storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season, while Houston reported more than 6 inches (15 centimeters). The New Orleans office of the National Weather Service said late Tuesday that as much as 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain could fall in parts of Louisiana, with some areas seeing particularly intense periods of 2 to 3 inches (5 to 8 centimeters) of rainfall per hour. In the small Louisiana community of Pointe-aux-Chenes, Ida peeled open the tin roof of Terry and Patti Dardar’s home, leaving them without power and water for more than two weeks since. Nicholas made the damage that much worse, soaking the upstairs. But it also provided them with badly needed water, which their son Terren and grandchildren collected in jugs and poured into a huge plastic container through a strainer. From there, a pump powered by a generator brought the water inside. His mom, Patti, said the family didn’t have anywhere else to go after Ida, so members were doing their best during Nicholas. “We ain’t got no other place," she said. “This is our home." Read:Tropical Storm Nicholas threatens Gulf Coast with heavy rain Gov. Edwards said Nicholas will complicate an already difficult recovery from Ida in southeast Louisiana. He noted that 95,000 electric customers were still without power more than two weeks after Ida hit. And he said the new storm could mean some who had regained power might lose it again. Homes already badly damaged by Ida were not yet repaired to the extent that they could withstand heavy rain, Edwards added. Energy companies working to restore power to remaining areas in the state said Wednesday that they were watching Nicholas closely but didn't expect it to affect their restoration times. A spokesman for Entergy Louisiana said Nicholas so far has not caused any delays to previously announced times to restore power. Crews cannot operate when lightning is within 10 miles (16 kilometers) and can’t put bucket trucks in the air at winds greater than 30 mph (50 kph), said Jerry Nappi. But once conditions improve they would quickly resume work. Joe Ticheli, manager and CEO of South Louisiana Electric Cooperative Association, said he did not anticipate that Nicholas would significantly slow its work to restore power after Ida. He said rain — the main threat from Nicholas — really doesn’t stop the linemen who are generally outfitted with slicker suits and grit, he said. “These are tough guys, and they relish all of this,” he said. The coop services about 21,000 customers across five parishes including parts of the hard-hit Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes. Ticheli said the coop has returned power to about 75% of its customers with the remaining 25% mostly in the hardest-hit parts of southern Terrebonne parish. Read:Hurricane Ida traps Louisianans, shatters the power grid In the weather-battered city of Lake Charles, in southwestern Louisiana, Mayor Nic Hunter said ahead of Nicholas the city prepositioned assets should they be needed, and city crews scoured the drainage system to keep it free from debris that might cause clogs and flooding. Lake Charles was hammered by Hurricane Laura last year, a Category 4 storm that caused substantial structural damage across the city of nearly 80,000 residents. Weeks later Hurricane Delta ripped through the same area. Freezing temperatures in January burst pipes across the city and then a May rainstorm swamped houses and businesses yet again. After multiple natural disasters in such a short period of time, Hunter said he’s worried about residents’ state of mind. “With what people have gone through over the last 16 months here in Lake Charles, they are very, understandably, despondent, emotional. Any time we have even a hint of a weather event approaching, people get scared,” he said.

Tropical Storm Nicholas headed toward the Texas coast Monday, threatening to bring heavy rain and floods to coastal areas of Texas, Mexico and storm-battered Louisiana. Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center in Miami said a hurricane watch was issued for the central portion of the Texas coast with much of the state’s coastline now under a tropical storm warning. Nicholas is expected to approach the middle Texas coast late Monday and could bring heavy rain that could cause flash floods and urban flooding. In a special advisory late Sunday, forecasters said the center of Nicholas had reformed, and the system strengthened. It had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (85 kph) and was moving north-northwest at 12 mph (19 kph). It was located off the coast of northeastern Mexico, and was on a forecast track to pass near the South Texas coast later Monday, then move onshore along the coast of south or central Texas by Monday evening. Nicholas over several days is expected to produce total rainfall of up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) in Texas and southwest Louisiana, with isolated maximum amounts of 20 inches (50 centimeters), across portions of coastal Texas beginning Sunday night through midweek. Read:At least 1 dead, 10 missing in landslide near Mexico City Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the state has placed rescue teams and resources in the Houston area and along the Texas Gulf Coast. “This is a storm that could leave heavy rain, as well as wind and probably flooding, in various different regions along the Gulf Coast. We urge you to listen to local weather alerts, heed local warnings,” Abbot said in a video message. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards on Sunday night declared a state of emergency ahead of the storm’s arrival in a state still recovering from Hurricane Ida and last year’s Hurricane Laura and historic flooding. “The most severe threat to Louisiana is in the southwest portion of the state, where recovery from Hurricane Laura and the May flooding is ongoing. In this area heavy rain and flash flooding are possible. However, it is also likely that all of south Louisiana will see heavy rain this week, including areas recently affected by Hurricane Ida,” Edwards said. The storm was expected to bring the heaviest rainfall west of where Hurricane Ida slammed into Louisiana two weeks ago. Although forecasters did not expect Louisiana to suffer from strong winds again, meteorologist Bob Henson at Yale Climate Connections predicted rainfall could still plague places where the hurricane toppled homes, paralyzed electrical and water infrastructure and left at least 26 people dead. “There could be several inches of rain across southeast Louisiana, where Ida struck,” Henson said in an email. Across Louisiana, 140,198 customers — or about 6.3% of the state — remained without power on Sunday morning, according to the Louisiana Public Service Commission. The storm is projected to move slowly up the coastland which could dump torrential amounts of rain over several days, said meteorologist Donald Jones of the National Weather Service in Lake Charles, Louisiana. “Heavy rain, flash flooding appears to be the biggest threat across our region,” he said. While Lake Charles received minimal impact from Ida, the city saw multiple wallops from Hurricane Laura and Hurricane Delta in 2020, a winter storm in February as well as historic flooding this spring. “We are still a very battered city,” Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter said. Read:Tropical Storm Mindy makes landfall on Florida Panhandle He said the city is taking the threat of the storm seriously, as it does all tropical systems. “Hope and prayer is not a good game plan,” Hunter said. In Cameron Parish in coastal Louisiana, Scott Trahan is still finishing repairs on his home damaged from last year’s Hurricane Laura that put about 2 feet of water in his house. He hopes to be finished by Christmas. He said many in his area have moved instead of rebuilding. “If you get your butt whipped about four times, you are not going to get back up again. You are going to go somewhere else,” Trahan said. Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said via Twitter that Nicholas is the 14th named storm of 2021 Atlantic hurricane season. Only 4 other years since 1966 have had 14 or more named storms by Sept. 12: 2005, 2011, 2012 and 2020.

A swath of the Florida Panhandle was under a tropical storm warning after Tropical Storm Mindy made landfall Wednesday night. The storm touched down over St. Vincent Island, about 10 miles (15 km) west southwest of Apalachicola, according to the National Hurricane Center. Read:Ida deaths rise by 11 in New Orleans; Louisiana toll now 26 Mindy could cause as much as 6 inches (15 centimeters) of rainfall across the Florida Panhandle and portions of southern Georgia and South Carolina through Thursday morning, the National Hurricane Center said. Scattered flash, urban, and small-stream floods are possible. Mindy’s arrival occurred only a few hours after it had strengthened into a tropical storm Wednesday evening. The storm had maximum sustained winds of 45 mph (75 km/h) and was moving northeast at 21 mph (33 km/), forecasters said. The tropical storm warning is in effect from Mexico Beach, Florida, to the Steinhatchee River to the east. That area is about 300 miles (500 kilometers) east of southern Louisiana, where Hurricane Ida made landfall late last month. The region is still recovering from the deadly and destructive Category 4 storm. Read:Officials anticipate progress fighting fire near Lake Tahoe Mindy is the 13th-named storm of what has been another busy Atlantic hurricane season. According to a tweet from Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach, the average date for the 13th-named storm from 1991-2020 was Oct. 24.

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.

Officials in New Orleans will thoroughly inspect senior living apartments in the city in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida after finding people living in buildings without working generators, which left residents trapped in wheelchairs on dark, sweltering upper floors, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said Monday. Hundreds were evacuated Saturday and the city later said five people had died in the privately run buildings in the days after the storm. The coroner’s office is investigating whether the deaths will be attributed to the hurricane, which struck land nine days before. The managers of some of the homes for seniors evacuated out of state without making sure the residents would be safe after the storm, New Orleans City Council member Kristin Palmer said at a news conference. “They’re hiding under the loophole of ‘independent living,’” Palmer said. “It’s not independent living if there’s no power and you’re in a wheelchair on the fourth floor.” The city is creating teams of workers from the health, safety and permits, code enforcement and other departments. Their first focus is to make sure the senior homes are safe and evacuate people if necessary, Cantrell said. Read: Outside of New Orleans, an even longer road to Ida recovery But after that, management will be held accountable, and the city will likely add requirements that include facilities having emergency agreements in place with contractors who will make sure generator power is available at the sites, the mayor said. Crews in Louisiana have restored power to nearly 70% of greater New Orleans and nearly all of Baton Rouge after Hurricane Ida, but outside those large cities, getting lights back on is a complex challenge that will last almost all of September, utility executives said Monday. It’s going to involve air boats to get into the swamps and marshes to string lines and repair the most remote of about 22,000 power poles that Ida blew down when it came ashore on Aug. 29 as one of the most powerful hurricanes to hit the U.S. mainland, Entergy Louisiana President and CEO Phillip May said. More than 530,000 customers still don’t have power in Louisiana, just under half of the peak when Ida struck eight days ago. In five parishes west and south of New Orleans, at least 98% of homes and businesses don’t have power, according to the state Public Service Commission. “It’s going to be a rebuild, not a repair,” May said. The struggles in rural Louisiana shouldn’t keep people from forgetting the “near miraculous” speed of the repairs in New Orleans, Entergy New Orleans President and CEO Deanna Rodriguez said. Read:Cleanup boats on scene of large Gulf oil spill following Ida “I am so proud of the team and I think it’s a fabulous good news story,” she said. But things aren’t normal in New Orleans. An 8 p.m. curfew remains in effect and numerous roads are impassable. Pickup of large piles of debris residents and businesses have been leaving on curbs will begin Tuesday, officials said. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Monday that he’s taken steps to help make the people doing the hard work of recovery have places to stay. He signed a proclamation ordering hotels and other places of lodging to give priority to first responders, health care workers and those working on disaster-related infrastructure repairs. The proclamation also suspended various state court legal deadlines until Sept. 24. “People all over the state of Louisiana are spending this week assessing the damages done to their homes and communities and are putting their lives back together after the ravages of Hurricane Ida. We need for them to be focused on recovery and not whether they will be held to a court deadline,” Edwards said in a news release. Ida killed at least 13 people in Louisiana, many of them in the storm’s aftermath. Its remnants also brought historic flooding, record rains and tornados from Virginia to Massachusetts, killing at least 50 more people. In the Gulf of Mexico, divers have located the apparent source of a continuing oil spill that appeared after Ida moved through the area about 2 miles (3 kilometers) south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana. Read: Searches, sorrow in wake of Ida’s destructive, deadly floods The owner of the pipeline hasn’t been discovered. Talos Energy, the Houston-based company currently paying for the cleanup, said it does not belong to them. The company said it is working with the U.S. Coast Guard and other state and federal agencies to find the owner. It remains the peak of hurricane season and forecasters are watching a cluster of storms near the Yucatán Peninsula. It’s not an organized tropical storm at the moment and is expected to move slowly to the north or northeast over the Gulf of Mexico, the National Hurricane Center said in a Monday update. Forecasts don’t show any significant strengthening over the next several days, but even heavy rain could cause more pain in Louisiana. “Unfortunately, it could bring a lot of rain to our already saturated region. If we are impacted, this could challenge our restoration.” said John Hawkins, vice president of distribution operations for Entergy Louisiana.

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.

Barbara Cochran said she was about to get ready for bed late Monday when she heard a loud crash outside her home in rural southeastern Mississippi. Hurricane Ida had been dumping torrential rain, her husband was already asleep and the home’s air conditioner was humming loudly. The 83-year-old retired educator said she went onto the porch to see if a big oak tree had fallen, or if an 18-wheeler had slid off the highway down the hill from their home. She didn’t see car lights, so she didn’t think there was a wreck. About 10 minutes after she went back inside, she heard a second loud crash. Moments later, Cochran heard a third crash. As she was about to call the sheriff’s department, she heard the wail of sirens. And, she said: “I heard something that sounded like a woman screaming.” Two people were killed and at least 10 others were injured late Monday when seven vehicles plunged, one after another, into a deep hole where a dark, rural highway collapsed as Hurricane Ida blew through Mississippi, authorities said Tuesday. Read: Thousands face weeks without power in Ida’s aftermath Heavy rainfall may have caused the collapse of two-lane Mississippi Highway 26 west of Lucedale, and the drivers may not have seen that the roadway in front of them had disappeared, Mississippi Highway Patrol Cpl. Cal Robertson said. The George County Sheriff’s Department received the first call at about 10:30 p.m. Cochran told The Associated Press that she didn’t know about the highway collapse or the wrecks until after she woke from a fitful night’s sleep. She said she is praying for the families of those killed or hurt. “This is such a catastrophe,” Cochran said Tuesday. Robertson said some of the vehicles ended up stacked on top of each other as they crashed into the abyss, which opened up in a rural area without street lights. Ida dumped as much as 13 inches (33 centimeters) of rain as it blew through Mississippi, the National Weather Service said. “You can imagine driving at night with heavy rain coming down,” Robertson said. “It’s just nothing but a wall of water, your headlights kind of reflecting back on you.” State troopers, emergency workers and rescue teams responded to the crash site about 60 miles (96 kilometers) northeast of Biloxi, to find both the east and westbound lanes collapsed. Robertson said the hole removed about 50 to 60 feet (15 to 18 meters) of roadway, and is 20 to 30 feet (6 to 9 meters) deep. George County Sheriff Keith Havard told the Sun Herald that the sheriff’s department received a 911 call from a man whose car had plunged into the hole. “He said he was driving and all of a sudden he wasn’t driving anymore,” Havard said. “He didn’t understand what had happened. I can’t imagine anyone would.” The newspaper reported that 911 dispatchers heard other vehicles crash into the pit. Read: Hurricane Ida traps Louisianans, shatters the power grid The vehicles were later lifted out by a crane, leaving some debris at the bottom of the hole. A drone video published by the Sun Herald showed how a raised berm beneath the road washed away, leaving a red-clay scar that runs for hundreds of feet, from a cemetery on one side into a wooded area on the other. “It is a slide, which means the ground under the roadway and embankment was super-saturated and we can tell right now that’s what caused the slide,” Kelly Castleberry, district engineer for the Mississippi Department of Transportation, told the newspaper. Jerry Lee, 49, of Lucedale, was pronounced dead at 1:20 a.m., and Kent Brown, 49, of Leakesville, was pronounced dead 10 minutes later, George County Coroner DeeAnn Murrah said. George County High School said one of its students, a senior, was hospitalized with critical injuries after crashing into the hole. Local schools were closed Tuesday because the collapsed highway created problems for buses and other traffic. Mississippi southern district Transportation Commissioner Tom King said he didn’t know anything unusual about the soil conditions where the highway caved in. “We just got bombarded here in south Mississippi with rain,” King told the AP. King said work crews were checking other highways in areas that received heavy rain from Ida. Read: Ida downs New Orleans power on deadly path through Louisiana Between 3,100 and 5,700 vehicles drive along the stretch of highway on an average day, according to Mississippi Department of Transportation data. “It’s going to take us a while to redo it and make it right again and make it safe for folks to go over,” King said of the collapsed roadbed. Mike Dillon is pastor of Crossroads United Pentecostal Church, which is near the crash site. He said he learned about the crashes after he woke up Tuesday and checked a community prayer page online. Like many local residents, he walked to the crash site and prayed. “We’re a very close-knit community,” Dillon said, “and we’re going to get through this with the help of the Lord.” Hurricane Ida blasted ashore Sunday as a Category 4 storm, one of the most powerful ever to hit the U.S. mainland. It knocked out power to much of southeastern Louisiana and southern Mississippi, blowing roofs off buildings and causing widespread flooding as it pushed a surge of ocean water that briefly reversed the flow of the Mississippi River.

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.

Hurricane Ida knocked out power to all of New Orleans and inundated coastal Louisiana communities on a deadly path through the Gulf Coast that was still unfolding Monday, promising more destruction. The heavy rain and storm surge has already had a catastrophic impact along the southeast coast of Louisiana, and life-threatening floods along rivers was continuing well inland as torrential rain kept falling, forecast to dump as much as two feet in places as Ida’s center moved over Mississippi. Ida made landfall on the same day 16 years earlier that Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi, and its 150 mph (230 kph) winds tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever hit the mainland. It was already blamed for on death, someone hit by a falling tree in Prairieville, outside Baton Rouge, deputies with the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office confirmed on Sunday. The power outage in New Orleans, meanwhile, heightened the city’s vulnerability to flooding and left hundreds of thousands of people without air conditioning and refrigeration in sweltering summer heat. Read: No cash or gas to run from Ida: ‘We can’t afford to leave’ The 911 system in Orleans Parish also experienced technical difficulties early Monday. Anyone needing emergency assistance was urged to go to their nearest fire station or approach their nearest officer, the New Orleans Emergency Communications Center tweeted. Ida finally became a tropical storm again 16 hours after making landfall in Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane. Its top sustained wind were 60 mph (97 kph) early Monday, and forecasters said it would rapidly weaken throughout the morning while still dumping torrential rain over a large area. The storm was centered about 95 miles (155 kilometers) south-southwest of Jackson, Mississippi, moving north at 8 mph (13 kmh). As Ida made landfall Sunday, the rising ocean swamped the barrier island of Grand Isle and roofs on buildings around Port Fourchon blew off. The hurricane then churned through the far southern Louisiana wetlands, threatening the more than 2 million people living in and around New Orleans and Baton Rouge. In Baton Rouge, 27-year-old Robert Owens watched the sky in his neighborhood light up as transformers blew up all around him. “Never in my life have I encountered something this major,” he said as giant gusts rattled his home’s windows. Significant flooding was reported late Sunday night in LaPlace, a community adjacent to Lake Pontchartrain, meteorologists in New Orleans said. Many people took to social media, pleading for boat rescues as the water rose. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said rescue crews would not be able to immediately help those who were stranded as the storm raged. And he warned his state to brace for potentially weeks of recovery. “Many, many people are going to be tested in ways that we can only imagine today,” the governor told a news conference Sunday. But he added, “There is always light after darkness, and I can assure you we are going to get through this.” Read:1st death from Hurricane Ida; power out across New Orleans The entire city of New Orleans late Sunday was without power, according to city officials. The city’s power supplier — Entergy — confirmed that the only power in the city was coming from generators, the city’s Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness said on Twitter. The message included a screenshot that cited “catastrophic transmission damage” for the power failure. The city relies on Entergy for backup power for the pumps that remove storm water from city streets. Rain from Ida is expected to test that pump system. Overall, more than 1 million customers in Louisiana were without power, and another 80,000 or so in Mississippi were in the dark, according to PowerOutage.US, which tracks outages nationwide. In New Orleans, wind tore at awnings and caused buildings to sway and water to spill out of Lake Pontchartrain. The Coast Guard office there received more than a dozen reports of breakaway barges, said Petty Officer Gabriel Wisdom. Officials said Ida’s swift intensification to a massive hurricane in just three days left no time to organize a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans’ 390,000 residents. In Lafitte, about 35 miles (55 kilometers) south of New Orleans, a loose barge struck a bridge, according to Jefferson Parish officials. And U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman Ricky Boyette said engineers detected a “negative flow” on the Mississippi River as a result of storm surge. Ida was churning in one of the nation’s most important industrial corridors — home to a large number of petrochemical sites. The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality was in contact with more than 1,500 oil refineries, chemical plants and other sensitive facilities and will respond to any reported pollution leaks or petroleum spills, agency spokesman Greg Langley said. Louisiana is also home to two nuclear power plants, one near New Orleans and another about 27 miles (about 43 kilometers) northwest of Baton Rouge. Read: Powerful Hurricane Ida closing in on Louisiana landfall The region getting Ida’s worst is also already reeling from a resurgence of COVID-19 infections due to low vaccination rates and the highly contagious delta variant. 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. Comparisons to the Aug. 29, 2005, landfall of Katrina weighed heavily on residents. Katrina was blamed for 1,800 deaths as it caused levee breaches and catastrophic flooding in New Orleans. Now facing Ida more than a decade and a half later, officials emphasized that the city’s levee system has been massively improved. President Joe Biden approved a major disaster declaration for Louisiana. He said Sunday the country was praying for the best for the state and would put its “full might behind the rescue and recovery” effort once the storm passes.

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.”