New Orleans imposes curfew to prevent crime in wake of Ida

New Orleans on Tuesday imposed a city-wide curfew to prevent crime after Hurricane Ida.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell signed the executive order mandating a curfew for all residents from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m.

Emergency and relief workers in New Orleans and the Parish of Orleans are exempt from the curfew.

The action went into effect immediately.

I have signed an Executive Order mandating a city wide curfew, effective immediately for all residents from 8pm -6am. pic.twitter.com/IywxeUtrXN

— Mayor LaToya Cantrell (@mayorcantrell) August 31, 2021

Cantrell, during a press briefing Tuesday, said the city’s police and personnel from the Louisiana National Guard will enforce the curfew.

“There’s absolutely no reason for anyone to be on the streets of the city of New Orleans,” Police Chief Shaun Ferguson said at the briefing, according to Bloomberg.

He added that the police department has already made “numerous arrests” for looting in the aftermath of the storm, but refused to give a specific number because he did not want to generate a “false narrative” that the city was not in control.

“It is somewhat, to me, an embarrassment to have a small group of individuals take these unnecessary actions while our city is very vulnerable,” Ferguson said.

“We are all in dire need, and we have to reach out and lean on one another to get through this together,” he added.

Ida knocked out power for all of New Orleans on Sunday evening. Energy New Orleans said the mass outage was because of “catastrophic transmission damage,” and that the storm caused a “load imbalance to the company’s transmission and generation.”

According to Bloomberg, the storm hit all eight power transmission lines that drive electricity in the city when it made landfall Sunday.

Cantrell, during the briefing Tuesday, said that executives from utility Energy Copt. told her that some transmission to New Orleans would be back by late Wednesday afternoon or morning, but that does not mean that the entire city would have power again.

“It could mean we do see some level of electricity or light in the city come tomorrow,” Cantrell said, according to Bloomberg.

“But again, the expectation should not be — because it’s not a real one — that the entire city will be lit tomorrow evening,” she added.

Ida made landfall as a Category 4 storm on Sunday near Port Fourchon, La. The National Hurricane Center said the storm was “extremely dangerous” when it came ashore.

1155 AM CDT: #Ida made landfall as an extremely dangerous category 4 hurricane near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph and a minimum central pressure of 930 mb (27.46 inches) https://t.co/tW4KeFW0gB pic.twitter.com/iHdKMGk0tq

— National Hurricane Center (@NHC_Atlantic) August 29, 2021