Yesterday, New Orleans and the surrounding marshland parishes of SE Louisiana were directly hit by Hurricane Ida. We all knew that this was going to be bad. Before the rain showers had coalesced into a tropical storm off the coast of Jamaica, the spaghetti models were in the most agreeance I’ve ever seen for any storm (see below, it’s impressive) that this was going to be a Category 4 or 5. The next name in line was Ida, which just sounds like the name of a notorious hurricane, certainly in comparison to more docile choices like Ingrid, Indica, or Ivanka. And it was due to strike on the 16-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, one of the deadliest and costliest natural disasters in U.S. history, slated to inflict its most intense wrath in many of the same places most affected by Katrina. All we could do was collectively hold our breath as Louisianans went through the seasonal ritual of boarding up windows and deciding whether or not to evacuate to higher ground.
After Ida made landfall as a Category 4 on Sunday morning, we had to keep holding our breath as the extent of damage would not be known until the next day. Of the over 2000 residents of Grand Isle, one of Louisiana’s only recreational beach towns, only 40 resisted mandatory evacuation orders, stranded with 8 firefighters to fend for themselves. The electricity quickly went out all over the region as all sizes of transmission lines were downed in the 100+ mph sustained winds, wiping out power to 1.8 million people. But the news that managed to get out was mainly positive: the levees and pumping systems around New Orleans held the floodwaters back completely. Only one storm-related fatality was reported by Monday morning in the New Orleans area, and the Cajun Navy is out in force to assist with rescue operations. While the physical destruction of Ida was devastating to the numerous small fishing communities on the bayous in her path, New Orleans fared comparatively well thanks to the 16 billion dollar flood control investment since Katrina.
However, the prolonged power outage remains a serious issue. As of Monday night, Entergy Corporation, who has a monopoly on electricity over New Orleans and southern Louisiana, has no update as to when power will be restored, except that it “could take up to 4 days to assess the damage” before grid-scale restoration efforts even begin. The story is startling: all 8 connections to the grid were knocked out of service, leaving the New Orleans area on an island with no electricity generation. Worse yet, the company shuttered its 60-year-old natural gas plant just across the river in 2016, lobbied extensively for a subsidized replacement, then pivoted before completing construction. It’s a grave situation that has many similarities to the Texas grid failure in February, a disaster of corporate mismanagement and lax government oversight. Hopefully the 15,000+ line workers pouring in from other states can rectify the crisis in Louisiana as soon as possible.
After seeing viral imagery of Category 4 damage and widespread power outages, I can already sense the keyboard warriors winding up their “I’d’a handled it better” grandstanding: that all power distribution should be underground everywhere, that victims shouldn’t get relief money because it was their choice to live in hurricane-prone areas, and that New Orleans should be abandoned before it sinks into the sea due to repeated storm surge flooding. I would argue, rather, that Hurricane Ida is a strong example that New Orleans can continue to survive and prosper with proper, government-initiated preparations. The levee system, much maligned after Katrina, survived a similar threat from Ida with no detected breaches. Wind-resistant construction has been a key requirement of the building code since the 1990s, so structures that were built back after Katrina stood up valiantly to the 100+ mph winds of Ida. The federal flood insurance program is tightening to reward flood-resilient architecture, no longer just a bailout for badly-built beach houses. The electrical grid could be remade to withstand catastrophes like this with some thoughtful civic design, as any combination of maintaining backup generation capacity or over-engineering a main grid connection could have greatly lessened this disaster. A little extra investment in rebuilding stronger can preserve the beautiful bayous of southern Louisiana along with the vibrant cultural epicenter that is New Orleans, one of my favorite cities in the entire world.
Worldly Observations 