Eyewitness video showed winds and rain from Hurricane Ida coming down on the premises in the Bywater neighbourhood on Sunday evening.
All of New Orleans, Louisiana’s most populous city, had power knocked out due to “catastrophic transmission damage,” the local utility reported, hours after flash-flood warnings were posted.
Hurricane Ida, making landfall as a fierce Category 4 storm, plowed into Louisiana from the Gulf Mexico on Sunday, lashing the coast with 150 mile-per-hour winds, torrential downpours and pounding surf that submerged much of the shoreline under several feet of water.
Residents of the most vulnerable coastal areas were ordered to evacuate days in advance. But those riding out the storm in their homes in New Orleans, less than 100 miles inland to the north, braced for the toughest test yet of major upgrades to a levee system constructed following devastating floods in 2005 from Katrina.
