One person has died and more than one million people have been left without power, as Hurricane Ida, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the US, has caused devastation across Louisiana.



Hurricane Ida made landfall late on Sunday morning at Port Fourchon, exactly 16 years since Hurricane Katrina, the catastrophic hurricane that killed more than 1,800 on the Gulf coast in 2005. The hurricane hit Louisiana as a Category 4 storm, lashing the coast with 150 mile-per-hour winds, and torrential downpours. It has since weakened to a tropical storm.



President Joe Biden has declared the event a major disaster and ordered federal aid to help recovery efforts.



The full extent of the damage remains unclear. Overnight, residents were told to evacute from Alliance, south of New Orleans, after a levee failure was reported. Another levee failure also occurred in the Lafitte and Jean Lafitte areas, where residents were urged to immediately seek higher ground. Elsewhere, some remain trapped in attics in LePlace, which suffered severe flooding.



Some hospitals have suffered damage to their buildings, just as they are dealing with the impact of a fourth wave of Covid.



The energy company Entergy earlier confirmed power had been cut off across the entire of New Orleans.

This morning, the center of Ida is expected to move further inland over southeastern Louisiana, and then move into southwestern Mississippi.



This afternoon and tonight, Ida is forecast to move over central and northeastern Mississippi, and move across the Tennessee Valley on Tuesday.