One person was killed as Hurricane Ida howled inland along the Louisiana's gulf coast, ripping off roofs from a hospital and homes, submerging roads and sending sea vessels adrift.
The Ascension Parish Sheriff's Office said it received reports around 9 p.m. CDT of a person wounded from a fallen tree in Prairieville, Louisiana.
Officers arrived and confirmed the victim's death - the first fatality reported from the storm -- the APSO said in a Facebook statement.
Hurricane Ida battered coastal communities in New Orleans and putting the city's system for resisting deadly inundation to its biggest test since Hurricane Katrina.
Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng said the only road into Grand Isle, a barrier island south of New Orleans with a population of around 1,000, was under six feet of water.
"The conditions right now are very, very bad... they are really getting beaten up right now," Sheng said in quotes by NBC News.
The hurricane packed maximum winds peaking 150 miles per hour -- just shy of Category 5 intensity. It made landfall earlier than expected Sunday -- on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
Ida's rapid strengthening baffled meteorologists and left authorities and Gulf Coast residents with little time to prepare.
The United States Coast Guard said Hurricane Ida has gotten so bad that rescue personnel cannot mobilize resources into flooded areas but are ready to deploy the moment conditions permit.
More than 968,000 households in Mississippi and Louisiana are without electricity, according to PowerOutage.US. City officials said the only electricity in New Orleans at this time is coming from diesel-powered generators.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) described Ida's storm surge as "catastrophic" and stated it could measure as much as 16 feet at Port Fourchon, where the hurricane made landfall shortly before noon.
"Unfortunately, the conditions right now is preventing us from responding into impacted areas," Vice Admiral Steven Poulin, the Commander of Coast Guard Atlantic Area, told Fox News, Sunday.
"This is one of the most powerful hurricanes here in modern times," Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a briefing Sunday afternoon, according to The New York Times.
