Ida’s Heavy Rains Send Louisiana Residents on a Hunt for Clean Water

KENNER, La. — In 1 of the galore lines snaking into state stations, retired of groceries and astir hardware stores successful Jefferson Parish, La., connected Wednesday sat Jeanne DiLeo, successful her car, waiting. The simplest of necessities required hours of effort successful the satellite that Hurricane Ida near behind. She had driven to Mississippi to bargain substance to support her car moving and her generator going, and was present sitting successful a caravan of vehicles successful beforehand of a religion to get nutrient and — astir important — water.

“The h2o is simply a trickle,” Ms. DiLeo, 45, said of what was happening erstwhile she turned connected her faucet successful Kenner. “Sometimes, it’s not adjacent a trickle.”

The tempest that ripped done southeastern Louisiana connected Sunday near a still-untold fig of radical without homes and astir a cardinal facing an indefinite agelong with nary electricity, but it besides wreaked havoc connected different indispensable service. Hundreds of thousands of radical recovered themselves successful places wherever h2o infrastructure was severely damaged by the tempest and pumps and attraction plants were near without power.

“This has go basic-level subsistence,” said Steve Robinson, the elder pastor of Church of the King, which has a tract successful Kenner, wherever a enactment of cars rolled done arsenic volunteers from his congregation handed retired pallets of h2o and buckets packed with toiletries, flashlights, first-aid kits and nonperishable foods. They yet ran retired of lukewarm meals.

This was life, upended, successful overmuch of the portion — an lipid authorities successful dire request of fuel, with places devastated by flooding near hopeless for water. More than a twelve hospitals person been evacuated and people with superior aesculapian conditions were inactive waiting for assistance successful homes without powerfulness and down roads blocked by fallen trees.

Carbon monoxide poisoning, from the misuse of generators, sent a twelve radical to hospitals successful New Orleans and near 1 idiosyncratic dead, the authorities said, raising the decease toll from the tempest and its aftermath to astatine slightest eight. President Biden was expected to sojourn Louisiana connected Friday.

And still, Ida was not finished. As the remnants of the tempest angrily slogged toward the northeast, it filled a dam to perilous capableness successful cardinal Pennsylvania, prompting the evacuation of thousands, and spawned tornadoes successful Maryland. Flash flood watches were issued astir New England, and Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York ordered authorities agencies to hole exigency effect plans.

Jefferson Parish, which is location to astir 430,000 radical and stretches from the Gulf of Mexico to the subdivisions and buying malls of suburban New Orleans, offered bleak grounds astir what a tempest of Ida’s magnitude tin bash to a place. Ida near a way of devastation done the confederate extremity of the parish, deluging small communities successful the wetlands and washing houses distant wholly connected the beaches of Grand Isle, which parish officials deemed “uninhabitable.”

By midweek, h2o remained 10 to 12 feet heavy successful spots successful tiny towns wherever flooding wrecked truthful galore homes that it is hard, adjacent days later, to springiness an accounting. “There are truthful galore of them,” said Tim Kerner Jr., the politician of Jean Lafitte, wherever h2o overtopped the levees and swallowed the municipality connected Sunday. “A batch of houses floated distant the h2o got truthful high.”

The occupation astatine the bluish extremity of the parish was different. There, the country was mostly protected from floodwaters by the monolithic analyzable of levees and flood walls that encircle New Orleans. But the hurricane’s winds caused chaos, uprooting trees and slapping down powerfulness lines. Buildings mostly remained standing, but the services needed to spell astir regular beingness had collapsed.

“We’re a breached assemblage close now,” Cynthia Lee Sheng, the president of Jefferson Parish, said astatine a quality conference. “We don’t person electricity. We don’t person communication. We don’t person gas. Our h2o and sewer systems are precise fragile.”

There is nary steadfast timeline of erstwhile energy volition instrumentality to the parish. Without powerfulness to thrust the pumping stations, tanker trucks person to capable up with sewage and instrumentality it to attraction plants, 1 travel astatine a time. Nowhere successful Jefferson Parish is the h2o drinkable consecutive from the tap.

Mark Drewes, who leads the parish’s Department of Public Works, said that aft the tempest roared through, small h2o unit remained successful the system; h2o was spilling retired done dozens of breached pipes and mains.

Without h2o pressure, it was astir intolerable to enactment retired fires, arsenic firefighters discovered erstwhile an flat analyzable adjacent the New Orleans airdrome went up successful flames connected Sunday night. With h2o pouring limply retired of hydrants, firefighters resorted to pumping up h2o pooled astatine a buying halfway crossed the thoroughfare and ferrying it to the occurrence each nighttime long.

Through a time-consuming process of searching for breaks and shutting valves, the unit has steadily risen. Still, it was not yet enough, officials said, to render the h2o drinkable nether authorities wellness standards. The parish’s largest hospital, Ochsner Medical Center, has been relying connected its ain well, drilled connected the field aft Hurricane Katrina, successful summation to deliveries of bottled h2o and potable h2o from h2o trucks.

For astir residents of Jefferson Parish, though, determination were the market stores, organisation centers and churches — and the long, agelong lines extracurricular them.

Given each this, officials were sounding the aforesaid enactment they had for days: If you left, bash not travel backmost yet. If you are here, you whitethorn privation to leave.

In Marrero, connected the occidental slope of the Mississippi River, buses lined up extracurricular of a playground to transportation radical to structure elsewhere successful the authorities — those who had endured the hurricane but were beaten down by the misery that followed.

One antheral said helium was exhausted from days without energy and water, the unrelenting humidity that had him sweating “consistently and profusely” and a location that was starting to reek of mildew. The man, who declined to springiness his name, said helium did not truly care, exactly, wherever the autobus would instrumentality him.

“Wherever I extremity up,” helium said, “is amended than wherever I was.”