Shafaq News / Hurricane Ida plowed into Louisiana from the Gulf of Mexico as a fierce Category 4 storm 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.

Power was knocked out Sunday night to the entire New Orleans metropolitan area with the failure of all eight transmission lines that deliver electricity to Louisiana's largest city, the utility company Entergy Louisiana reported.

One transmission tower collapsed into the Mississippi River, according to the Jefferson Parish Emergency Management Department.

U.S. President Joe Biden declared a major disaster in Louisiana, ordering federal assistance to bolster recovery efforts in more than two-dozen storm-stricken parishes.

Ida slammed ashore around noon near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, a hub of the Gulf's offshore energy industry, blasting the coast with hurricane-force winds extending 50 miles (80 km) out from the eye of the storm. Landfall came 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, one of the most catastrophic on record, struck the Gulf Coast.

Sunday night, the sheriff's office in Ascension Parish reported the first known U.S. fatality from the storm - a 60-year-old man killed by a tree falling on his home near Baton Rouge, the state capital.

Source: Reuters