of new orleans is joining me now on the phone, she is a democratic member of louisiana s house of representatives. thank you so much for talking with us. appreciate you inviting me on. so the worst of hurricane ida is over, but for some residents a new nightmare begins now, thoseattics, those who lost everything. let s start with the most important part of this, the search and rescue efforts. how are they progressing? that has been going well. luckily we had most of our people who were in particularly dangerous areas, they did evacuate. but our people who lived in lower lying areas who did stay, that has been moving along. luckily it wasn t that many people and what we re dealing with now is just a massive electrical infrastructure problem. yeah, that is the big one, isn t it. so talk to us about that because for a lot of people of course
without power. that number is going up. it was about 25,000 a few hours ago. now 56,000. and for now, the things are looking good here in the business district. lower lying areas, a little bit of a different story. to video now near lake ponch train. that is a big area of concern. as rob mentioned this area is essentially a bowl. it s below sea level. they have put in a lot of flood protection since katrina. still, there is only so much you can do. you can see neighborhoods around lake ponch train, high water levels already causing water to spill into some of the streets there folks were packing up their pets and belongings to get out. fox news drone video now showing the high water levels. you know, from up above, it really puts things into perspective river rob talked about is super high from all
sandbar. and inundating some of the inner areas, the lower lying areas. but once the tides receded, then it started getting back out and we were table to get out of there safely. all right, you be safe. thank you, sir. i appreciate it. from one storm chaser to another, i want to go to mike theiss now. tell us what you re seeing? that s right, don. i can actually reiterate what anderson cooper said earlier sqand that bright flash of blue was a transformer. it sounded like someone fired a shotgun off right next to my car. conditions here definitely started to deteriorate more. winds are picking up. wave got heavy rains coming through. and i m watching the radar on the western eyewall, and it s
hit, the heart of the storm, around midnight or perhaps in the early morning hours. i ve got to tell you, when forces already feel like they are at hurricane level here. we ve seen gusts of more than 6s gotten worse in the past half hour or so. the rain is coming in in sheets sideways. we are not seeing branches or twigs being snapped off yet, but spend getting significant worse the past half hour or so. as far as corpus christi goes, a city of about 300,000 people, it s been under a voluntary evacuation. many of the areas along the texas coast, lower lying areas, have been in mandatory evacuations. throughout the past 48 hours, we ve been seeing people get on the road being picked up sometimes by authorities, taken by bus, anything to get out of here. and the real problem is, the real challenge is, you are going to have to go in a long way to actually get out of the storm. it could hang around for a day or two.