Waves crash against the New Canal Lighthouse as the effects of Hurricane Ida in New Orleans, Louisiana. Reuters

Gulf Today Report

Hurricane Ida pounded Louisiana after sweeping ashore from the Gulf of Mexico, flooding wide areas under heavy surf and torrential rains as fierce winds toppled trees and power lines, plunging New Orleans into darkness after nightfall.

The storm, though greatly diminished as it churned inland toward western Mississippi early on Monday, was expected to continue unleashing heavy downpours "likely to result in life-threatening" flooding, the National Hurricane Center said.

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

More than a million customers in Louisiana and Mississippi were without power according to PowerOutage. US, which tracks outages nationwide, increasing their vulnerability to flooding and leaving them without air conditioning and refrigeration in sweltering summer heat.

Sixteen years ago, Hurricane Katrina ravaged the coast of New Orleans, causing over 100 billion dollars worth of damage and killing 1,800 people. Now, on its anniversary, another hurricane, Ida, has made a second landfall on its shores, as people shore up defences against nature’s force.

Vehicles are damaged after the front of a building collapsed during Hurricane Ida in New Orleans, Louisiana. AFP

It is packing wind speeds of up to 150 miles (240 km) per hour and is expected to bring in its wake a lot of damage.

US President Joe Biden warned on Sunday that Hurricane Ida posed a danger to life and the prospect of immense devastation, marked by power outages potentially lasting for weeks for residents leaving near the US Gulf Coast.

However, among the most powerful hurricanes in history to hit the United States, the Florida Keys Labour Day hurricane in 1935 could rank as the worst.

It hit as a Category 5, and packed winds of up to 200 miles an hour. But what was most tragic about it was the human damage: it killed more than 200 World War One veterans who were in the Keys busy building a highway. Altogether, 400 people perished in the natural disaster.