New Orleans power outage after transmission tower collapsed into Mississippi

On Sunday night, Hurricane Ida began to roll up the river, turning Big Easy into a blackout.

Ada’s squalls hit New Orleans with great force during the night, causing a transmission tower to fall into the Mississippi River. Next, the city fell into a power outage.

This occurred during one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the region, when winds of 120 miles per hour passed over Crescent City. This includes Hurricane Katrina which made landfall 16 years ago today.

Katie Moore of WWLTV in New Orleans was one of the first to report the collapse of the tower.

“Emergency: The Entergy transmission tower in Avondale collapsed. New Orleans City Council member Joe Giarrusso said #HurricaneIda destroyed 8 Entergy transmission lines, including one of Harahan’s main transmission line. #BeOn4,” she wrote.

More than 1 million customers in Louisiana, including New Orleans, lost power on Sunday night, even less than 12 hours after Hurricane Ida hit the town of Port Fuljeong in the Parish of La Furche.

As Ida passes through Louisiana at night as a Category 2 storm, the number of helpless customers is expected to continue to climb, and it is likely to enter Mississippi as a Category 1 storm on Tuesday morning.

Not only did New Orleans respond to a city-wide power outage on Sunday night, but it was also watched by a tornado by the Ada Eastern band. By midnight the storm was downgraded to a category storm, and Ida appeared to turn west of New Orleans. However, the threat of severe storms and sporadic tornadoes on the east side of Ida Island is still widespread.

Hurricane Katrina landed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 2005 and did not directly hit New Orleans. That storm did cause damage to the dam and flooded the Ninth District of New Orleans.

Since Hurricane Katrina, there has never been a storm of this magnitude in the New Orleans area, which makes residents nervous.