In the News
With widespread suffering after Hurricane Ida, Gov. John Bel Edwards faces renewed pressure to retroactively reinstate five weeks worth of pandemic jobless benefits, a move that could send $1,500 checks to more than 150,000 Louisiana residents.
Congressman Troy Carter, D-New Orleans, on Wednesday called on the Democratic governor to restore the benefits, arguing in a letter that he has the power to "provide relief to Louisianans who desperately need help" in the storm's catastrophic aftermath.
U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge plans to visit Kenner and New Orleans on Friday to see damage caused by Hurricane Ida.
Fudge will tour the Westminster Tower senior apartments in Kenner at 11 a.m. followed by the Guste Senior Apartments in Central City an hour later. She will end her tour at New Orleans East Hospital at 2:25 p.m., a HUD spokesperson said Thursday.
Members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation are requesting President Biden and Congress provide additional assistance amid Hurricane Ida’s “catastrophic” impact on the state.
Bipartisan letter to House leadership urges relief amid National Flood Insurance Program rate hikes
BATON ROUGE, La. (BRPROUD) – Louisiana’s senators are working to put pressure on the federal government to provide more aid to the state after Hurricane Ida. For both Sen. Bill Cassidy and Sen. John Kennedy, the main focus right now is to get additional relief dollars to the state to get people back in their homes and infrastructure fixed.
But for long-term plans, that is where they differ.
After a powerful hurricane tore across Louisiana and plunged the state into prolonged darkness, utility Entergy launched a plan to harden its power network to withstand the devastating winds that had reached nearly 140 mph.
That storm was Hurricane Betsy in 1965, and despite billions in investments made over the following decades, Hurricane Ida still crumpled critical parts of the state's power infrastructure last week, causing outages that are slowing the recovery efforts from the type of hurricane that climate change is expected to make more deadly in the coming years.
Though the power remains out for more than 95% of St. Charles Parish residents and businesses after Hurricane Ida, the lights are now on in at least one community.
Power has been restored to Montz, a small neighborhood located on the western end of the parish’s east bank.
“It’s a glimmer of hope,” St. Charles Parish President Matthew Jewell said.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra visited New Orleans on Aug. 27 to raise attention to the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to end the spread of COVID-19 and its variants, as part of the White House “Build Back Better” policy. Becerra spoke alongside community leaders in New Orleans on ways to improve “vaccine confidence.”