Nearly 1 million customers without power as Hurricane Ida charges inland

More than 900,000 customers have lost power in Louisiana, and authorities warn that widespread outages could last weeks.

At least one person is dead in Ascension Parish, the first death be attributed to the storm.

Ida was testing the New Orleans flood protection system, bolstered by a $14.5 billion investment after Hurricane Katrina.

The roof was blown off a south Louisiana hospital with patients inside, in a visceral indication of how the storm has collided with an already strained health-care system.

President Biden promised Sunday to “put the country’s full weight” behind rescue-and-recovery efforts and noted that he signed emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi in advance so that aid could be “surged.”

Almost 1 million people in New Orleans and surrounding cities were put under a flash-flood warning through Sunday night, while a “life-threatening” flash-flood “emergency” was declared in some communities south of New Orleans, near the Mississippi River.

Ida made landfall at 12:55 p.m. near Port Fourchon, La., with 150-mph winds and tied for the most intense hurricane on record to strike Louisiana.