Hurricane Ida: High winds rip part of roof off Louisiana hospital, video shows
Hurricane Ida tore off part of a hospital’s roof in southeastern Louisiana as it ripped through the area Sunday afternoon.
Video posted to social media showed the roof of the Lady of the Sea General Hospital in Cut Off blowing off in the storm’s extreme winds.
The hospital is a “25-bed critical access hospital serving the healthcare needs of the South Lafourche community,” according to its Facebook page.
There was no immediate word from the hospital on possible injuries or the extent of the damage.
Hurricane Ida made landfall in southeastern Louisiana on Sunday afternoon. The Category 4 storm had maximum sustained winds of 130 mph as of 4 p.m. CDT Sunday and was bringing catastrophic storm surge, extreme winds, heavy rain and flooding to the area, according to the National Hurricane Center.
At 4 p.m., the storm was located 45 miles southwest of New Orleans and 70 miles south-southeast of Baton Rouge, the NHC said. It was moving northwest at 10 mph.
“Catastrophic wind damage” is expected near the storm’s core as it moves inland Sunday, and life-threatening storm surge is expected to continue through Sunday evening, the NHC says. Ida is forecast to continue dumping heavy rain on the central Gulf Coast through Monday.
Officials in some areas within Ida’s path — including parts of New Orleans — ordered residents to evacuate ahead of the storm.
On Saturday, some hospitals near the Louisiana coast — which are packed with COVID-19 patients as the highly contagious delta variant spreads across the country and prompts outbreaks — were evacuating some of their most critical patients in anticipation of losing power during the storm, The Advocate reported.
But Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Sunday that more than 2,400 patients were in Louisiana hospitals and that evacuating patients from the largest facilities in the storm’s path wasn’t an option.
“There aren’t hospitals with the capacity to take them,” Edwards said, according to the Associated Press. “And so making sure that they can maintain power and water, have access to all the things that they need and oxygen and other things is going to really consume a lot of our time and attention because we know that the lights could be out, power could be out for weeks.”
Hospital officials have not said whether patients have been moved from the Lady of the Sea as a result of the damage, the Lafourche Gazette reports.
Cut Off is about 64 miles from New Orleans.
This story was originally published August 29, 2021 at 2:31 PM with the headline "Hurricane Ida: High winds rip part of roof off Louisiana hospital, video shows."
