Hurricane Ida - rolling updates Monday 30 August

This article will be updated and amended as more information is reported.

Nothing can be said about Ida's estimated losses for several days.

Certainly Ida has a much smaller footprint than Katrina and so expectations are that insured loss estimates will be much lower than Katrina which took place on the same day 16 years ago.

Further to our earlier news items here on Sunday, after making its second landfall at Galliano, Ida maintained its Category 4 strength for several hours with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph, but these have now dropped to 75mph.

Water damage

Hurricane Ida will have been the biggest test of the approx US$15bn expenditure by the US Army Corps of Engineers on upgrades against hurricane defenses in the New Orleans area, since Katrina in 2005, involving (re)building and improving some 350 miles of levees and floodwalls around SE Louisiana.

A huge surge barrier has been constructed and a series of high capacity pumps for removing any spill over and heavy rainfall.

Ida is slow moving however and continues to cause heavy rainfall of between 10 to 18 inches. Category 5 Katrina's by contrast caused flooding to 80% of the city with waters up to 6m deep.

Most of New Orleans has lost its power supply from Sunday evening which affected its pumps and sewer system capacity. Some generators and backup power supplies have come on line.

Flash flooding has taken place in various parishes and towns such as Jean Lafitte and LaPlace.

Rivers are expected to reach flood levels as per this graphic from Baton Rouge's WBRZ.com - over the next few days - click here.

Wind damage

Reports of structural damage in New Orleans have been made for example to one power transmission tower which has knocked out power in most of the city and to a hospital roof and to the municipal court and Louisiana State University. We await further reports.

Other areas outside New Orleans in SE Louisiana

Baton Rouge is a major industrial area with its ports and petrochemical plants. Oil refineries have been shuttered. We await news as to the effects on these from Ida.

S&P Global Platts said on Sunday that government statistics show that 95% of oil and gas production in the Gulf Coast region was shut down as Ida made landfall. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, has suggested that the impact on the overall U.S. economy should be modest so long as damage estimates don’t rise sharply and refinery shutdowns are not prolonged, click here for full article.