New Orleans faced catastrophic damage from Hurricane Ida on Sunday. The hurricane was downgraded from Category 4 to Category 3, but winds, rain and surges left the entire city without electricity due to "catastrophic damage to power lines," which also disrupted water and sewage systems.
The slow-moving Hurricane Ida left all Orleans County consumers without electricity due to "catastrophic power failures," Entergy New Orleans reported.
A violent storm destroyed all eight power lines in the New Orleans area, company spokesman Brandon Scardigly said. This created a load imbalance that knocked out all power generation in the region.
From WWL-TV Reporter David Hammer: "URGENT @WWLTV: The New Orleans Sewerage and Water Authority has lost all three feeder lines from Entergy. This means the agency lost 12 megawatts of 60-cycle electricity to run its new drain pumps and only the turbine remains. 6 to produce 15 megawatts in-house.
The New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board sent a status update via Twitter:
“Even though we have lost all of Entergy's capacity, our teams are working quickly and decisively to compensate for this with our own energy sources, including turbines 4, 5 and 6 and EMDs, as well as standby generators located at our pumping stations. Energy loss by Entergy is a significant loss of electricity for our 60 Hz pumps and 25 Hz pumps that we supply through frequency converters, but we use our own power sources to drain storm water and pump potable water into the city. also affects our sewage pumping stations. There is currently no backup power supply for all those affected stations. We estimate how many of the 84 stations were affected, but the number could be very significant."
A local meteorologist said it was the worst he had seen: "This is the hardest day in my 30-year career. And tomorrow will be no better. We are devastated."