More than a million customers were without power after Ida made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane in Louisiana on Sunday, the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. By Monday, the storm was downgraded to a tropical storm, but still posed a major threat of flooding and high winds to the inland Southeast and the mid-Atlantic, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Entergy, which provides power to New Orleans, reported “catastrophic damage” to its transmission and that all 400,000 of its customers in Orleans Parish were powerless, noted U.S. News & World Report. Ida moved farther inland over southeastern Louisiana and Mississippi early Monday. The National Hurricane Center projected Ida would move across the Tennessee Valley today.
The White House said yesterday more than 3,600 Federal Emergency Management Agency employees were deployed and 17 urban search and rescue teams, along with hundreds of air and ground ambulances, had been staged. FEMA also deployed more than 3.4 million meals.
The FCC deployed personnel over the weekend in preparation for the storm. They are on the ground to assess the post-landfall impact to communications networks and to assist in efforts to restore service as quickly as possible. The agency is coordinating its efforts with FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, and other government partners. The Commission also coordinated with industry on emergency preparedness and pre-positioned life-saving communications equipment.
In its first Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS) report for Ida on Monday, the FCC said nearly 30 percent of the cell sites in the total impacted areas of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi were out of service as of 11 a.m. Eastern.
Louisiana bore the brunt of the outages, with over 50 percent of impacted cell sites out of service (1,437) out of a total of 2,759 sites. The majority, 933, had no power, 441 reported data transport issues and 128 were damaged, according to DIRS. The parishes with the most outages were Assumption and Terrebonne (100 percent each) and Plaquemines (89.3 percent).
In Mississippi, out of a total 2,714 cell sites, 377 were not working (just under 14 percent). The majority (269) had data transport issues, 93 were without power and 16 were damaged.
Cable and wireline companies reported 338,115 subscribers in Louisiana had no service. This may include the loss of telephone, television, and/or internet service. In Mississippi, 16,106 lost service and the number dwindled to 478 in Alabama.
In Louisiana, Orleans Parish and St. John Parish Sheriff’s Office re-routed 911 calls to another 911 call center with location information. Livingston Parish 911, St. Mary Parish, and Vermilion Parish 911 were reported as being operational with no location information, according to DIRS. St. Bernard Parish Fire, St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s Office, and Terrebonne Parish rerouted 911 calls to the administrative lines without location information. No 911 call centers were reported to be affected in Alabama and Mississippi.
Fifteen television stations reported being on the air, with two off the air. Nineteen FMs were on the air yesterday and three were off-air. Six AMs were reported to be on the air and two were off-air.
The following counties or parishes are in the current geographic area that’s part of DIRS.
Alabama: Baldwin, Clarke, Conecuh, Escambia, Mobile, Monroe, Washington.
Louisiana: Acadia, Ascension, Assumption, Avoyelles, East Baton Rouge, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Iberia, Iberville, Jefferson, Lafayette, Lafourche, Livingston, Orleans, Plaquemines, Point Coupee, St, Martin, St, Mary, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. Helena, St. James, St. John the Baptist, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Terrebonne, Vermillion, Washington, West Baton Rouge, West Feliciana.
Mississippi: Adams, Alcorn, Amite, Attala, Benton, Bolivar, Calhoun, Carroll, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Claiborne, Clay, Coahoma, Copiah, DeSoto, Forrest, Franklin, George, Greene, Grenada, Hancock, Harrison, Hinds, Holmes, Humphreys, Issaquena, Itawamba, Jackson, Jefferson, Lafayette, Lamar, Lee, Leflore, Lincoln, Madison, Marion, Marshall, Monroe, Montgomery, Panola, Pearl River, Perry, Pike, Pontotoc, Prentiss, Quitman, Sharkey, Stone, Sunflower, Tallahatchie, Tate, Tippah, Tishomingo, Tunica, Union, Walthall, Warren, Washington, Webster, Wilkinson, Yalobusha, Yazoo.
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