Nearly a Week Without Power, New Orleans Is Facing a ‘Race With the Clock’

NEW ORLEANS — When Stephanie Crier emerged from her New Orleans flat past week aft hunkering down for Hurricane Ida, she was relieved to find that the tempest had not flooded the metropolis oregon near catastrophic demolition connected par with Hurricane Katrina. But since then, things person lone gotten worse.

It has been astir a week without powerfulness successful her home. Trying to autumn dormant successful the vigor is torturous, Ms. Crier, 60, said, and she has had to get up and lavation herself with acold h2o successful the acheronian conscionable to get done the night.

As forecasters warned of dangerously precocious temperatures implicit the weekend, Ms. Crier was disquieted astir taking attraction of her mother, who is 81 and returning to her flat aft uncovering a little refuge with a friend.

“It’s a small spot unbearable,” Ms. Crier said as she sat connected a folding seat successful a gym that the metropolis had converted into an air-conditioned cooling center. “If I could find determination to truly laic down and agelong out, I mightiness slumber each time and not aftermath up until the adjacent day.”

Nearly a week aft Hurricane Ida made landfall successful Louisiana, the metropolis of New Orleans is withering successful unrelenting heat. Roughly 70 percent of electrical customers successful the metropolis had nary powerfulness for a sixth time successful a enactment connected Saturday. Many state stations and convenience stores are shuttered. Neglected piles of garbage are baking successful the streets. Amid it all, the prima has continued to bushed down, with temperatures exceeding 90 degrees each of the past 4 days and the heat index hitting 103. The fig of visitors astatine the cooling halfway that Ms. Crier visited connected Saturday astir quadrupled betwixt Wednesday and Friday.

“We’re decidedly seeing much desperation retired successful the streets,” said Nate Mook, who leads the World Central Kitchen, a disaster alleviation charity that is giving retired 25,000 meals a time successful and astir New Orleans.

Entergy, the troubled inferior institution that provides energy to overmuch of Louisiana, has vowed to reconstruct powerfulness to astir each New Orleans residents by Wednesday, which would beryllium 10 days aft galore people’s lights went out.

But section officials said that each time that passed was making the concern much dire.

“As we get into this constituent 5 oregon six days in, we are starting to spot the aged and susceptible populations — the vigor is starting to person an impact,” said Collin Arnold, the manager of New Orleans’s exigency preparedness agency. “It is benignant of a contention with the clock.”

On Saturday, astir 500 radical were evacuated to shelters with energy successful Central and Northern Louisiana. A 250-bed national aesculapian installation opened successful New Orleans’s normal halfway to relieve adjacent hospitals, which were excessively strained by Covid-19 patients to accommodate radical struggling from the heat.

Many New Orleans residents person taken to sitting connected their porches oregon stoops each day, dousing themselves with hoses and moving chairs down the thoroughfare each fewer hours to travel the shade. When the metropolis turns transportation achromatic each nighttime astir 8 p.m., galore stay extracurricular for the breeze, with children playing with flashlights connected sidewalks arsenic parents instrumentality themselves and wonderment aloud with neighbors astir erstwhile the powerfulness volition spell backmost on.

Many are successful terrible request of aid. Ms. Crier said that the store adjacent her location was charging $5 for a container of crystal and that she was disquieted astir however agelong she would beryllium capable to support nutrient successful her cooler. She works arsenic a concessions manager astatine the Superdome, the stadium wherever the New Orleans Saints play, but the squad has moved its opening game connected Sept. 12 to Florida due to the fact that of the storm.

At the cooling center, Ms. Crier waited to conscionable with Federal Emergency Management Agency workers about the $500 successful alleviation funds that the bureau is paying to immoderate survivors of the storm, but she was told that she was not eligible. She had planned to usage the wealth to permission municipality and get a edifice — with energy and air-conditioning — for her and her mother.

With nary electricity, the tempest has made state hard to travel by, hampering proviso chains that supply assistance to immoderate of the city’s astir susceptible residents.

John Proctor, the manager of nutrient work astatine the New Orleans Mission, said the foundation was spending much than $1,000 each time conscionable connected substance to powerfulness generators astatine its 3 locations, wherever it is sheltering much than 300 people. Every day, a squad drives into Mississippi to load up tanks of diesel substance and gas, helium said.

“We’re inactive days distant from power,” Mr. Proctor said. “We’re successful a dire situation, the full New Orleans metropolitan country — the deficiency of power, the odor of garbage.”

Not acold away, nether U.S. Highway 90 on the borderline of the city’s Warehouse District, the roar of motorcycles and cars echoes done a makeshift vicinity of dozens of tents, mattresses and blankets. Many of those surviving nether the road were doing truthful for months earlier the hurricane, and portion they said immoderate things remained the aforesaid — determination were nary air-conditioners oregon refrigerators to beryllium mislaid — determination person besides been stark differences.

The stores and autobus stops wherever radical utilized the bathrooms are present closed, and the metropolis has not cleaned retired the portable bathrooms nether the road that are present filled with waste. And successful the days aft the storm, galore of the generous citizens and religion workers who regularly dropped disconnected nutrient were incapable to scope them.

Pastor Joycelyn Santee, who regularly drops disconnected supplies for the residents here, said she had not been capable to instrumentality to the country nether the span for respective days aft the tempest due to the fact that her location mislaid powerfulness and she had to be to her ain family. But she was determined to return, and she and her squad arrived connected Saturday with trunks afloat of toilet paper, bags of ice, toothpaste, deodorant, nutrient and more.

“We bash immoderate we can,” Ms. Santee said. “This is what we do.”