Hurricane Ida evacuees urged to return to New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS – With powerfulness owed backmost for astir each of New Orleans by adjacent week, Mayor LaToya Cantrell powerfully encouraged residents who evacuated due to the fact that of Hurricane Ida to statesman returning home. But extracurricular the city, the prospects of betterment appeared bleaker, with nary timeline connected powerfulness restoration and homes and businesses successful tatters.

Six days aft Hurricane Ida made landfall, hard-hit parts of Louisiana were inactive struggling to reconstruct immoderate consciousness of normalcy. Even astir New Orleans, a continued deficiency of powerfulness for astir residents made a sultry agelong of summertime hard to carnivore and added to woes successful the aftermath of Ida. Louisiana authorities searched Friday for a antheral they said changeable different antheral to decease aft they some waited successful a agelong enactment to capable up astatine a state presumption successful suburban New Orleans.

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Cantrell said the metropolis would connection proscription starting Saturday to immoderate nonmigratory looking to permission the metropolis and get to a nationalist shelter. It already began moving immoderate residents retired of elder homes.

At the Renaissance Place elder location Friday, dozens of residents lined up to get connected minibuses equipped with wheelchair lifts aft metropolis officials said they determined conditions astatine the installation were not harmless and evacuated it.

Reggie Brown, 68, was among those waiting to articulation chap residents connected a bus. He said residents, galore successful wheelchairs, person been stuck astatine the installation since Ida. Elevators stopped moving 3 days agone and garbage was piling up inside, helium said. The residents were being taken to a state-run shelter, the mayor’s bureau said.

“I’m getting connected the past bus,” Brown said. “I’m able-bodied.”

A telephone connection for the institution that manages the Renaissance site, HSI Management Inc., was not instantly returned.

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But Cantrell besides encouraged residents to instrumentality to the metropolis arsenic their powerfulness comes back, saying they could assistance the alleviation effort by taking successful neighbors and household who were inactive successful the dark. Only a tiny fig of metropolis residents had powerfulness backmost by Friday though astir each energy should instrumentality by Wednesday, according to Entergy, the institution that provides powerfulness to New Orleans and overmuch of southeast Louisiana successful the storm’s path.

“We are saying, you tin travel home,” Cantrell told a quality conference.

The outlook was not arsenic promising southbound and westbound of the city, wherever Ida’s fury afloat struck. The sheriff’s bureau successful Lafourche Parish cautioned returning residents astir the hard concern that awaited them — nary power, nary moving water, small cellphone work and astir nary gasoline.

Entergy offered nary promises for erstwhile the lights volition travel backmost connected successful the parishes extracurricular New Orleans, immoderate of which were battered for hours by winds of 100 mph (160 kph) oregon more.

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President Joe Biden arrived Friday to survey the damage successful immoderate of those spots, touring a vicinity successful LaPlace, a assemblage betwixt the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain that suffered catastrophic upwind and h2o harm that sheared disconnected roofs and flooded homes.

“I committedness we’re going to person your back,” Biden said astatine the outset of a briefing by officials.

The president has besides promised afloat national enactment to the Northeast, wherever Ida’s remnants dumped record-breaking rainfall and killed astatine slightest 50 radical from Virginia to Connecticut.

At slightest 14 deaths were blamed connected the tempest successful Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, including those of 3 nursing location residents who were evacuated on with hundreds of different seniors to a warehouse successful Louisiana up of the hurricane. State wellness officials person launched an probe into those deaths and a 4th 1 astatine the warehouse installation successful Tangipahoa Parish, wherever they accidental conditions became unhealthy and unsafe.

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The wellness section connected Friday reported an further decease — a 59-year-old antheral who was poisoned by c monoxide from a generator that was believed to beryllium moving wrong his home. Several deaths successful the aftermath of the tempest person been blamed connected c monoxide poisoning, which tin hap if generators are tally improperly.

More than 800,000 homes and businesses remained without powerfulness Friday evening crossed southeast Louisiana, according to the Public Service Commission. That’s astir 36% of each inferior customers statewide, but it’s down from the highest of astir 1.1 cardinal aft the tempest arrived Sunday with apical winds of 150 mph (230 kph). Ida is tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane ever to onslaught the mainland U.S.

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Deslatte reported from Baton Rouge and Santana reported from Marrero. Associated Press writers Chevel Johnson successful New Orleans; Jeff Martin successful Marietta, Georgia; Sudhin Thanawala successful Atlanta; and Jeffrey Collins successful Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.

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