Steve Helber / AP
Crews begin work on downed power lines leading to a fire station, Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2021, in Waggaman, La., as residents try to recover from the effects of Hurricane Ida.
Saturday, Sept. 4, 2021 | 2 a.m.
Brenda Johannessen and her granddaughter, Juliette St. Martin, at dinner in Baton Rouge. Johannessen is a former Las Vegas resident who was living in Louisiana when Hurricane Ida hit last week.
Former Las Vegas resident Brenda Johannessen was in Baton Rouge, La., when Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana.
The whipping winds and intense rainfall caused power outages across the city, including at Johannessen’s home on Aug. 29 — the day Ida made landfall.
That same day, Las Vegas was hot, dry and free of the extreme weather that caused devastation across the state, highlighting Louisiana’s poor defenses against flooding, particularly in cities like New Orleans.
Johannessen, who moved last year Louisiana to be closer to her daughter, Paige St. Martin, and grandchildren, kept in touch with friends and family in Las Vegas despite lacking power. St. Martin and her family evacuated to Houston before the storm hit and returned to find their house with minimal damage and without power.
The family is now living with Johannessen in the interim, and unable to work or access child care.
“It’s life-changing, makes you appreciate life,” Johannessen said. “It’s been hard watching my daughter be stressed, but we’re going to get through it.”
A Category 4 storm, Hurricane Ida decimated Louisiana exactly 16 years after Hurricane Katrina, a Category 3 storm, struck the state.
But though intense weather is commonplace in Louisiana, Ida was not an ordinary storm. It ties for the fifth-strongest hurricane to ever blast the United States mainland, and its initial 150-mph winds dropped to 95 mph as it scurried inland.
John Spears, another Las Vegas resident, was living in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina barreled through the state in 2005. He recalled the rising waters and distressing conditions while holed up in a local Day’s Inn. Then 16 years old, he and several family members burned through their food supply quickly before being rescued by helicopter about a week later.
Many of those same family members were still in New Orleans when Ida hit, he said.
“It’s hard because I’m basically across the country,” he said. “I can’t really do anything. … It’s like, what can you do but make sure you talk to somebody every day to see if anything changed?”
In the aftermath of the storm, hundreds of thousands of Louisiana residents have been thrust into living without power, and some officials anticipate weeks without it. Last week, 35 firefighters from Clark County, Henderson, North Las Vegas and Las Vegas departments traveled to Grand Isle, La., to aid in Federal Emergency Management Agency’s search-and-rescue efforts.
Carolyn Streva, a Las Vegas resident and Johannessen’s close friend, said it was worrying to hear them describe the severity of the storm.
“She’s [Johannessen] telling me how scary it was, even just the wind,” she said. “She was texting me, like, minute per minute.”
Jon Streva, Carolyn’s son, graduated from Louisiana State University in May. For a few days during the storm, he lost touch with several friends, including his fraternity brothers who live in the state.
Jon and his friends primarily stayed in touch through a group chat, where one friend in Thibodaux, La., sent videos as the storm rolled in. His two friends in Mandeville were the most difficult to keep track of because they lost power for two days, he said.
“There was no way to contact them at all,” he said. “They couldn’t even get [us] an update when they were about to lose cell service, so it was kind of worrying for them, but we kept on trying and then eventually we were able to … get through.”
