Biden declares major disaster as hurricane Ida strikes Louisiana

US President Joe Biden declared a major disaster in Louisiana and ordered federal aid to supplement recovery efforts in the areas affected by Hurricane Ida, the White House said on Sunday.

“Assistance can include grants for temporary housing and home repairs, low-cost loans to cover uninsured property losses, and other programs to help individuals and business owners recover from the effects of the disaster,” the White House said.

Dangerous high-end category 4 Hurricane Ida has made landfall with maximum sustained winds of about 240 km per hour just west of Grand Isle, Louisiana, bringing life-threatening storm surge, catastrophic winds, and massive flooding.

The US weather channel said Ida’s center crossed the coast near Port Fourchon, which is less than 100 miles south of New Orleans, at 11.55 AM on Sunday, reports Xinhua news agency.

Hours later, some 302,000 homes and businesses in the state were without electricity, according to the tracking website poweroutage.us.

“It’s going to be a horrible day. All of the worst things we thought the storm could do I think are about to happen,” National Weather Service Meteorologist Benjamin Schott said shortly before the landfall. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards said at a briefing on Sunday afternoon that Ida is “one of the strongest storms to make landfall here in modern times, as it rapidly intensified at an unprecedented rate, right up until landfall”.