Hurricane Ida has knocked out power to roughly 1.1 million customers across Louisiana and Mississippi. Disaster recovery efforts are under way. Power companies and IT service providers (ITSPs) could be particularly busy in the New Orleans area.
The bad news for local businesses and residents: It will likely take days to determine the extent of damage to Entergy's power grid in metro New Orleans and far longer to restore electrical transmission to the region, company executives said on August 30, according to NOLA.com.
Here are key details so far...
- Strength: Ida was tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever hit the U.S. mainland. Its storm surge submerged cars, flooded streets and temporarily reversed the Mississippi River's flow near Belle Chase, according to preliminary data from the U.S. Geological Survey, USA Today reports.
- Landfall: The storm first crashed ashore near Port Fourchon, less than 100 miles south of New Orleans. A short time later it made a second landfall a few miles to the north, near Galliano. Source: USA Today.
- Data Centers - Generator Power: Commercial data centers operated by Venyu and EdgeConneX remained online throughout the storm, though the data center providers have leveraged generators amid power outages throughout the region, Data Center Frontier reports.
- Death: Ida has been blamed for one death, NOLA reports.
- Power outages: 1.02 million in Louisiana and 124,000 in Mississippi as of 7:40 a.m. ET on Monday, August 30, according to PowerOutage.us.
- Continued Threats: Ida is forecast to move well inland over portions of western Mississippi on August 30, and move across the Tennessee Valley on Tuesday, August 31.
Stay tuned for continued updates.
