Turning to the United States, where hurricane Ida slammed ashore in Louisiana.
It knocked out power to the entire city of New Orleans, and inundated coastal Louisiana communities as the hurricane is slated to rampage through the Gulf Coast and bring more destruction to the region.
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Louisiana took a beating today, as hurricane Ida made landfall on the same day 16 years earlier that hurricane Katrina dealt a devastating blow to Louisiana and Mississippi.
Packing winds of up to 230 kilometers per hour, Ida is considered the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever ravage the U.S. mainland.
With its category 4 hurricane status, it rendered homes obliterated, and even toppled the roof of a gas station in Mathews.
Ida was already blamed for at least one death in Louisiana. The storm had given residents there its foretaste, as before the storm hammered the region, the winds were so strong a tree was toppled, killing a person in Prairieville outside Baton Rouge.
To add insult to injury, the storm led to power outages in New Orleans, rendering hundreds of thousands of people there in the dark, and without air conditioning and refrigeration in the sweltering summer heat.
The city's Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness attributed the massive power failure to catastrophic transmission damage.
Ida had maximum sustained winds of up to 120 kilometres per hour early today, meaning it weakened to a Category 1 hurricane more than 12 hours after making landfall in southern Louisiana.
The storm was centered 70 kilometers south-southwest of McComb, a city in southwestern Mississippi, and was moving north at the speed of 9 kilometers per hour.
The barrier island of Grand Isle also suffered the full brunt of the storm. The rising ocean left the island nearly submerged, and buildings were destroyed.
Now, despite having left a trail of destruction, the hurricane is still moving forward, threatening the lives of more than 2 million people living in and around New Orleans and Baton Rouge as bayous and creeks may overflow again.
A bit of elbow grease done beforehand was proven to be useless, as evidenced by the serious damage to houses in Louisiana.
The Gulf Coast is often hammered by storms and bad weather in summer, which stands to reason why one resident in Louisiana has become inured to deadly hurricanes.
Marco Apostolico is adamant his house will outlast Ida, and is not frightened at all, despite the storm's propinquity.
Marco Apostolico: Ours was built in 2013, and it's thin panel construction, standing seam roof. It's supposedly bolted all the way from the ceiling down to the pier and beams, so it's got room to sway in the wind. And, you know, standing seam roofs can withstand like 160 mile-per-hour winds.
Louisiana's Governor, John Bel Edwards, said rescue crews wouldn't be able to immediately start a gargantuan rescue effort as the storm raged, and warned of potentially weeks of recovery.
President Joe Biden zeroed in on the storm, approving a major disaster declaration for Louisiana. Sending his prayers to Gulf Coast residents, Biden promised authorities will go full steam ahead to rescue those stranded once the storm passes.
Biden: And to the people of the Gulf Coast: I want you to know that we're praying for the best and planning - prepared for the worst. As soon as the storm passes, we're going to put this - we're going to put the country's full might behind the rescue and recovery.
In the end, Louisiana's levee system has been proven to have greatly improved, as a carbon copy of the massive flooding disaster in which hurricane Katrina culminated 16 years ago has been largely averted this time.
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