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just look at this video here on your screen. flooding is wide spread. and some areas could see up to 20 inches of rain. more than 700,000 homes and businesses are now without power. and that number is sure to climb. officials say it could take weeks to fully restore power. now within the next hour or two, new orleans will be seeing its highest winds and heaviest rain. the levee system was vastly upgraded after katrina and holding as of now. south of the city, the rainfall and storm surge have pushed water over our levee in plaquemines parish. a flash flood emergency is in effect. i spoke to a critical care doctor in baton rouge bracing for the worst. we would be able to be the most significant event of our lifetime. we currently have a full hospital, but we re the regional medical center and so we are essentially acting that role. we have over 700 providers in the hospital. 50 of those are physicians. 400 are nurses. 300 are non-clinical. we re split into two staffs. ....
at least one person has died after a tree fell. ida was a category 4 when it made landfall with winds that reached 150 miles per hour. louisiana s governor said it s one of the strongest storms to make landfall in modern times. the entire city of new orleans is now in darkness. people in some areas have reported flood waters reaching up to their chest, pleading for rescue. more than a million customers are without power across the state. people who evacuated are staying in shelters. louisiana s governor estimates several dozen decided to ride it out in place. we re better prepared now in terms of our protection system. but when you have mother nature throw at you a storm this strong with the surge, the wind, the rabe that we re talking about with hurricane ida, there s going to be devastating impact. and we have to do everything we can to save lives in the immediate response, and we ll get to the property repairs later. but i can tell you for several days, we re going ....
we have been keeping an eye on a number of alerts of damage from the storm, and power is the primary issue, and entergy is the power company, and they are out of power and it s causing an imbalance in transmission. this is a compounded problem because they need that for a lot of things, including pumping water away from the levees. let me be clear, we have no reports of damage to levees. there s reports of flash flooding and an emergency that has been issued by the weather service, but that s not pursuant to damage of the levees. we will keep an eye on that and continue to update you as the evening goes on. we have plenty of correspondents out in the field, and ali velshi is in new orleans, and janessa web, we ll start with you. what can you tell us? we are dealing with a destructive and deadly storm system and it s dark across southeast louisiana, and we saw the storm make landfall eight hours ago and it s downgraded to a cat 3. can you see that we re dealing with se ....
with ali velshi weathering the storm. tonight, hurricane ida is a category 2 storm, but a powerful one at that. let s begin with ali in new orleans, where the power has been out for some time, and it looks like it s going to be out for a while. reporter: yeah, joshua, we re in the 11th hour since landfall of this storm, and it s still whipping up. you can see this water behind me in new orleans, which wasn t sort of inside of the center of this hurricane to start with. so it s a very, very powerful storm, and it s mostly hitting new orleans on the backside of this thing. we saw it pop up in wind about 2, 2 1/2 hours ago, to pretty intense. it started to let off for a little while, and we re still getting big gusts and bands. what ended up happening about a couple of hours ago is we lost power. we lost it in the local area here downtown. i thought it might have been central to this block or building. we learned there was a much bigger problem. it was what they call a c ....
devastated the state 16 years ago today. it s too early to assess ida s huge swath of damage, but the wrecking power is obvious. just look at this video right here. flooding is widespread in ida s path and some areas could see up to 20 inches of rain. more than a half million homes and businesses are without power, and that number is sure to climb. officials say it could take weeks to restore power. the levee system in new orleans vastly upgraded after katrina is holding so far. the state s governor says hurricane ida will be the levee s most severe test. let s go to the cnn weather center and meteorologist tom sater. tom, are you surprised this is still a category 4 storm hours after it made landfall? very surprised really. we knew it was going to hit with a punch, and we knew because it was kind of small and compact in its size that it would act as a cannonball and shoot inward. just moments ago, we can now say it s weakened to a category 3. that s still amazing to ....