having to tell everybody to hunker down. old school get a mattress or get in the center of the house. hundreds of people we ve had to tell them today we just can t get to them. how does that make you feel? 16 years ago today was katrina. a lot of us suffered a lot of losses personally with that. so it is just kind of like dejavu. you know, here again. we were talking earlier, general honore, him and i worked together during katrina. it is just surreal. we re looking around and seeing total destruction and haven t really been able to see it yet because it is dark. we know when we wake up in the morning it is going to be level. if you even go to sleep tonight. how do you think ida compares to katrina? you mentioned today is the 16-year anniversary. i think when it is all said and done this storm is going to have more widespread damage than katrina. we ve yet to see exactly what is going on in new orleans. we re hearing a lot of reports around the area, in the south a
we got covid. we got the storm devastating people. there is nowhere for people to go. nowhere for people to go. you have the hospitals over crowded with covid patients. they can t evacuate the patients. you said you ve been preparing for this. how has your organization prepared for the devastation? this storm is likely to bring to your state and the gulf coast, as you pointed out, we still don t know the scope of the damage and this storm is still very powerful. our home base is baton rouge. i m over here and i don t think we ll get as much of the storm as we could have but when it is all said and done i think it will be as bad or worse than katrina with the widespread scale. going back to the hospitals being full, people are wet. they ve been wet all day. when you get wet you get sick. you get the sniffles and stuff. we re seeing people right now we re picking up and they re
is really striking the fear for you right now? the fear for us is well, we ve been preparing for two years with covid. right now, some of the people we re picking up it s like i m in a hotel now with no power and the rain is coming down. some of the people brought in, there is no covid protocol. we try to do the best we can with masks and temperature checks but my biggest fear we are bringing people into an environment we could have problems later on. unfortunately, you have to consider saving a life first. so right now, it s just we worried. it a big worry to everything. we have covid. we have the storm devastating people and there is nowhere for people to go. there is nowhere for people to go. you have the hospitals over crowded with covid patients that can t evacuate patients. you said you ve been preparing for this. how has your organization been preparing for the devastation this storm is likely to bring to the state in the gulf f ccoast. we still don t know the scope of
in new orleans, the power is completely out after what s being called catastrophic transmission damage and the worst may be yet to come for the city. a city we re used to seeing full of life, not tonight. hours after making landfall, ida remains a category 3 storm. well, the storm s eye just west of new orleans and spawned a tornado watch for eastern louisiana and stretching into portions of southern mississippi, alabama and the florida panhandle. and as night falls, people in the path of ida have had little chance to assess the damage and we ll have to wait until the morning. we have no idea how far the devastation goes. the hurricane came to shore with 150 mile per hour winds and then it slowed to a crawl. all the while continuing to
beyond me is because jake s light is shining light down bourbon street. there is a larger building with lights at the top of it that has to be generated power. the only buildings that have any power now are doing so by a generator and that, of course, in and of itself as we ve been reporting, that brings dangers in and of itself because according to louisiana state officials last year when hurricane laura came through here, they had 25 deaths as a result of that storm. out of those 25, nine of them were because of carbon monoxide poisoning, people not using, it gets harder to venture out. careful how we use generators. we re told the eye of the storm has very recently made the closest pass that it s going to make to new orleans. it was about 20, 25 miles south south west of new orleans.