good afternoon everyone and thank you for your continued coverage for everyone watching i pray that you and your families are safe and well what i can tell you is that the last couple days have not been good for our state and for the next several days and weeks they will not be easy either but i can assure you that we will get through this obviously our focus since the early hours of this morning after the hurricane passed through has been on search and rescue missions saving lives is the number one priority and to that end at around three o'clock this morning as soon as the weather allowed we started moving search and rescue assets people boats trucks to the affected parishes and those search and rescue efforts are going to continue all day and quite frankly for as long as necessary and i want to pause just for a moment and really thank all of the men and women who are working so hard to make this happen this really has been a partnership between the local level first responders states the federal government has put assets into this effort as well and when i say state it really is about 16 different states including louisiana that have been engaged in search and rescue today and as much as i wanted to get out and surveyed the damage for myself today i did not do so because all of our air assets were needed today for search and rescue because the affected portion of our state was so large and many of those areas were not accessible by ground at least not until late into the day so i hope to be able to get out and about tomorrow as was forecasted hurricane ida delivered catastrophic wind surge and rain across southeast louisiana almost the entire southeastern port part of our state is without power presently and sometimes you hear it you know million people without power it's about 1.1 million homes and businesses it's well over a million people i don't have a precise number for you we do have about 25 000 linemen in the state engaged in the effort to restore power and several thousand more or in route obviously we need to have the power restored just as quickly as possible and for that restoration process there's going to be some priorities so that the most critical infrastructure comes up first and quite frankly we're talking about things like our hospitals dialysis centers and so forth and while this was an extremely catastrophic storm and again the surge the wind the rain was all as advertised if there is a silver lining and today it's kind of hard to see one it is that our levee systems really did perform extremely well our federal non-federal levy systems particularly the hurricane and storm risk reduction system in the metropolitan new orleans area all performed as intended i can tell you that there's been a preliminary damage assessment of levees today people getting eyes on those levees we don't believe there was a single levee anywhere now that actually breached that failed there were a few smaller levees that were over topped to some degree and for some duration of time and that did result in some people's homes being flooded but they did not fail they overtopped in a in a few areas and i want to thank all of the people across the country who have been very generous in their support in terms of the investment made in that hurricane risk reduction system cpra is working to deploy portable pumps and flood fighting assets to lafourche and plaquemines parish to saint bernard to lafitte to laplace to grand isle and to saint charles to assist with some dewatering efforts that are necessary this morning i conducted a unified command group meeting um fema representatives were on hand national guard corps of engineers all of our state agencies as well to ensure that all the partners across the state are coordinating getting help to our people just as quickly as possible i was also able to participate in a call with president biden and the fema administrator and other state and local officials both in louisiana and in mississippi i appreciated the president's time today as you may have heard the secretary of department of homeland security and the fema administrator will be in louisiana tomorrow i look forward to meeting with them to further explain to them what the situation is here and the needs that we have that they can assist with and i hope to also visit several of the affected parishes tomorrow we're putting that schedule together as we speak there are more than 5 000 national guardsmen activated and responding to this disaster and more are on the way from sister states we've known since before this hurricane hit that additional assistance would be needed in terms of soldiers of different military occupational specialties such as mps and engineers and so forth and i can tell you we've received commitments from 13 additional states and these soldiers from these other states will start rolling into louisiana within the next couple of days the national guard search and rescue assets already engaged and in fact this engagement area is about 29 parishes but they've they've got 195 high water vehicles 79 boats and 34 helicopters all conducting search and rescue since very early this morning uh one of the numbers that i got earlier today the national guard had rescued 191 citizens and 27 pets across jefferson st john the baptist and orleans parishes but also conducted helicopter hoist and lift operations in laplace and jean lafitte jean lafitte i should say the state fire marshal's office is leading a task force of about 900 individuals from 15 different states they've been conducting primary search and rescue operations in collaboration with local first responders worked a little differently today because for the first part of the day they were responding to 9-1-1 calls and calls for help that had come in overnight that could not be responded to because the the weather just wouldn't allow first responders to go out the mission now is to go back and do the very organized grid search where they do a primary search and then they'll come back and do a secondary search to make sure that any survivors who need to be rescued are in fact rescued in addition to the task force currently on the ground we have 200 additional individuals on the way from new york and from massachusetts i can tell you that that task force checked on more than 400 homes today the vast majority of people were found to be okay and unharmed but a number of individuals did require rescuing and then there were actually there was actually one that had a life-threatening emergency due to physical and damage and to water and electric issues uh three hospitals have been evacuated since the storm hit us yesterday those are chaber and houma saint anne's and raceland and our lady of the sea in galliano a fourth hospital terrebonne general is in the process of being evacuated tonight the department of transportation development has 177 buses in operation and so far they have evacuated more than 400 people from various locations in the affected parishes there are eighteen water system outages impacting more than three hundred twelve thousand people and fourteen boil water advisories impacting more than 329 000 people and we've talked about electricity we've talked about water it's pretty clear that if you have evacuated now is not the time to return unless and until your parish informs you that is okay to do so businesses aren't open stores aren't open schools aren't open and quite frankly we need to put as little demand on our water systems and on our electric on our electric grid as possible so please before you return contact your office of emergency preparedness or listen to the guidances being issued by your parish tragically we can confirm one storm-related death so far a 60 year old man from ascension parish who died after a tree fell on his home off of highway 621 and it's a good time to remind people that just because the storm has passed it doesn't mean the dangers have not as we've talked about before in almost all of these storms more people are killed after the storm passes so with all of the people without electricity tonight and for some time to come there will be a lot of generators in use please make sure you operate those generators outside in a well ventilated area away from your home not under windows and doors not in crawl spaces or garages carbon monoxide poisoning is absolutely deadly please pace yourself when you go out to clean up your yard or remove debris heat indexes will reach 100 degrees or more over the next two weeks at least we're also asking that you don't get on the road unless it is absolutely necessary and many parishes have curfews in place so please follow the directions of your local elected officials there are currently 76 weather-related road outages dotd crews have been out since very early this morning assessing roads and clearing those roads of debris principally things like um trees that have fallen on the roads because of the high winds and i can tell you that i-10 westbound in the capital region is open however i-10 is closed in ascension parish due to downed trees that have not yet been removed that work is ongoing crews are also working clear portions of i-12 that are blocked in multiple areas because of runaway vessels in bayou bariteria colonel bridge in jefferson parish in the lapid area is damaged to the point where it will be closed for some period of time if you have to get on the road please check 511la.org for road closure information and other travel related information as well it is still the case that there are downed trees and power lines and other debris and standing water as well on many roadways in southeast louisiana as of 2 30 today there were just shy of 2 000 people sheltered in 36 different locations across louisiana for the latest shelter information text la shelter to 898 898-211 or you can call 2-1-1 i have to keep reminding people that whether we like it or not we're still in a covid environment it is a very difficult covet environment where 100 percent of our cases today are attributable to the delta variant which is highly transmissible transmissible so please make sure that that you're as safe as possible where wherever you are whatever you're doing uh and these sheltering operations and transportation and evacuation operations all everything we're doing needs to be done with cobid in mind so it's important that we mask that we distance that we wash our hands do all of these things to the maximum extent possible last night president biden approved my request for a major disaster declaration we made that request yesterday before lunch and he approved it last night and i want to thank him for his prompt attention and his favorable response to that request specifically he granted to southeast louisiana individual assistance and public assistance as well as category a which is debris removal and for the state as a whole he granted category b emergency protective measures the category a and b is for a 100 percent federal cost share for 30 days from the start of the incident for the public assistance is at 75 percent for the federal government i feel quite certain we will cross the threshold necessary to request that that be increased to 90 percent all of this assistance is going to be extremely helpful because people can now register for individual fema assistance if they live in one of the affected parishes already more than 18 000 people have taken advantage of the opportunity to register for individual assistance and so if you live in one of the following parishes please register for fema aid if you were impacted by hurricane ida and those parishes are ascension assumption east baton rouge east feliciana iberia ibraville jefferson lafourche livingston orleans plaquemines poincarpee saint bernard saint charles saint helena saint james saint john the baptist saint martin saint mary saint tammany tangipahoa terrebonne washington west baton rouge and west feliciana parishes for many people the fastest and easiest way to apply for fema assistance is by visiting disasterassistance.gov if it isn't possible to apply online you can call 800-621-3333 the toll-free telephone lines operate from 6 a.m to 10 p.m seven days a week and i know that cell phone coverage has been very spotty today electricity is practically non-existent for most people in southeast louisiana and so the internet may be a problem but you have several ways to register for aid and certainly you have an extended period of time in which to do so but as soon as you're able and if you've been impacted by the hurricane and live in one of these parishes we encourage you to register for aid the division of administration has also announced it is closed state offices tomorrow in the same 25 parishes we will let you know if there are additional closures in the future in closing i want to ask the people of louisiana to do what you always do best and that is to be a good neighbor take care of yourself take care of your family reach out to the elderly couple next door across the road make sure to the extent that you can you're checking on family members who may be elderly or have special needs there are an awful lot of unknowns right now there are certainly more questions than answers i can't tell you when the power is going to be restored i can't tell you when all the debris is going to be cleaned up and repairs made and so forth but what i can tell you is we're going to work hard every single day to deliver as much assistance as we possibly can and i can tell you we're going to push entergy and all the other electric companies to restore power just as soon as they can and they are busy doing that again with more than 25 000 linemen on the job as we speak those linemen by the way come from 22 different states can't tell you when your cell service is going to be restored if it's currently out although i can tell you that att made tremendous progress earlier this afternoon and so hopefully your cell phone coverage is back or will soon be back and i i know that uh cell phones have become the preferred method of of making phone calls for many people there are a lot of individuals who don't even have landlines and this made communication very difficult and frustrating today not just difficult and frustrating but if you needed help it might have been very difficult for you to call for that help but we do believe that this situation is going to improve very very quickly if your phone service hasn't yet been restored and i know that a lot of people out there are tired and sometimes this can be you know too much to to bear it's a lot to deal with but i know the people of our state are stronger than the strongest of storms our spirit is unbreakable and we're going to embark on this road to recovery together don't know yet if we will have a press conference tomorrow i do hope to visit as i said with the dhs secretary and the fema administrator and then travel across southeast louisiana and visit several of the parishes as well and we may just make ourselves available to the press as we make those stops or at least one of those stops as we as we travel but we will give you more information later so at this point i'm going to pause and take questions we've got a lot of people here who can answer questions and and so forth and so if you if you feel like you need to direct a question to one of them please feel free to do so and certainly if i feel like uh one of them would be better able to answer a question i'll ask them to come up and respond yes sir yeah and and look uh it it's it's very difficult to be without power whether it's because you want lights or an air-conditioned home or because you're trying to run a business or you're trying to run a hospital or dialysis center and save people's lives the storm came through yesterday it exited our state very very late yesterday almost still at hurricane strength it tied for as best we can tell the strongest hurricanes that have ever impacted the state of louisiana the winds were extremely strong and sustained at 150 miles per hour for a long period of time and i've been seeing um reports that gusts got into the hundred and seventies maybe the early i mean lower 180s and in different places this wreaks havoc on infrastructure and that includes on the electric grid uh and you know there are eight transmission lines that that feed the new orleans area all of them fail and i can tell you entergy has been out and not just energy all the electric companies and and working with the public service commission they have been out doing their damage assessments today figuring out the best strategy to start to restore power and giving preference to those critical infrastructure pieces that have to be powered up first we really need our hospitals more than anything else to come back up so that people who are in icu rooms and owned ventilators and so forth can continue to receive the life-saving care that they need that's important all the time it's certainly important even more so uh because of the co-bit situation the number of people uh in the hospital and many of whom are on uh mechanical ventilators so uh you know i expect that that in the not too distant future there will be announcements by energy and others as to when they believe power will be restored uh but quite frankly we're just not there yet uh and and you know people are impatient i get it i am too but the storm uh was was still ravaging our area yesterday it hadn't even reached i-10 24 hours ago and so it's just it's just too soon right now to say when that power's going to be restored i but trust me i'll be pushing them to get it done as soon as possible and quite frankly i don't need to they're they're out there working extremely hard they had more linemen committed to this effort before the storm ever made landfall than we've ever seen in louisiana so i'm optimistic sooner than later it'll be restored but i can't be more definite than that melinda yeah a bunch uh i didn't and i have received that information i didn't bring it but but i can tell you in the ldh regions um one three and and nine uh an awful lot of the hospitals are on generator power and they may there may actually be a couple left in region two here in the baton rouge area although the power has been coming back on here uh you know fairly quickly and and this this is a real issue for us and and we're working very hard with ldh uh with the corps of engineers and the public service commission uh so that so that restoration of power to the hospitals is prioritized but the corps of engineers is helping fema and gosep work to make sure that we are putting technicians at all of these hospitals to keep these generators running as long as possible but also to identify exactly the size generator that is needed so that we can get a backup on site in case that one should fail and and we need to transition to a new generator these things are happening as we speak um and i'll get you a better number than a lot of them but for now i can just tell you it's it's more than than not yes yeah well so search search and rescue typically when the state forces come in for the urban search and rescue we go in and do a grid search uh where we're going to go to and search every single home on every street and we do that primary search and then that that's done pretty quickly to try to figure out whether someone is in the house and and so forth and needs assistance and then to make sure that we've adequately covered the area we'll go back and do a secondary search well what we did most of the day today was try to catch up on the 911 calls so we were actually partnering with with local authorities and going out and doing uh search and rescue at individual addresses where we know people had called for help and so that that occupied most of the day and i'm looking over i don't see i don't see butch uh but but the butch browning the state fire marshal leads this effort uh for us and and so that's that's what we're doing now we're going to have to transition into uh that grid search that i just mentioned and because we have so many uh populated areas in southeast louisiana that receive such damage whether it was from the wind or from the rain or the storm surge this is going to take quite some time it's why we have so much of our national guard dedicated to it while we have this 900 person task force with more on the way because we want to make sure that anyone who is in their home who needs help is going to receive it and they've got to receive it in a timely fashion yes ma'am yeah there there uh have been some rescues made from grand isle uh as best we can tell about 40 people stayed on the island and probably not a good decision but but there were efforts made earlier today at in and around jean lafitte and grand isle and does anybody here have any more specific information jim on yeah yeah and we're not aware of any loss of life in grand isle but it was only accessible by air uh today and and so we were able to finally get some air assets up uh and i know that we've been able to get some people on the ground to inspect facilities there as well and and so i i'm i'm quite certain that that any needed rescues have been made and we will we will get back with you if if for some reason that's not the case yes sir um yeah well first of all any any additional deaths would be unconfirmed and until a coroner officially confirms to death and attributes that death to the hurricane i'm not going to get in front of them i will just tell you that i had a number of conversations overnight and and today with parish presidents and other officials who believe that the death count attributable to the hurricane will go up because they see catastrophic damage in certain places that they have every reason to believe were inhabited at the time the damage occurred and and it is certainly possible and and i'm praying for it uh that by some miracle individuals had left or did survive and so forth but i think that's what that's what you're hearing out there and and uh and i would be surprised but but obviously very pleasantly surprised if the uh confirmed death toll doesn't go up considerably over the next couple of days but what we want to make sure of is that the death toll doesn't go up for things that are entirely preventable like carbon monoxide poisoning like heat exhaustion like falling off the roof or or injuring yourself when you uh use a chainsaw or driving into water you know something like that that's typically where we see the most deaths associated with hurricane it's in the recovery not in the actual storm itself melinda um no and and uh one of the good things about a hurricane and there aren't many is that when the hurricane passes the wind changes direction and it'll blow the water out just like it blew it in and and we saw that happen um and and so in most in most places the the water began receding uh pretty quickly now there are a few areas where they received a lot of rain inside protected levees where that water isn't going to drain out and it ultimately has to be pumped out and there there are some pumping issues you know even in new orleans but but we're we're very pleased to say that uh new orleans actually withstood the rain quite well and no storm surge got into that area and and so very limited number of structures actually took on any water in new orleans but there may be some pumping that's needed to get that water uh in the lakeview area for example out and back back into the lake the other thing that's helping us is the weather forecast today from the national weather service doesn't call for a great deal of rain over the coming week and so we we are going to dry out as well um and and and might there be an isolated area or two where you know something could happen and and and there be a little more water than than they currently have i'm out that's always possible but that's not something that we we are particularly concerned about at the present yes sir yeah yeah well first of all this is this is a tough blow i mean and and but things are going to be okay it's hard to see that today uh but we are we're going to get through this and and we've been through these times before we're going to get through this one one thing i can tell you is nothing is ever perfect it doesn't happen as fast as you want it to happen and and and it's a very little consolation to someone that the levees held up if in fact their homes took water and and if your home didn't take water but you lost your roof or your walls because of the wind you know but at the end of the day this was a catastrophic storm uh we're going to work as hard as we can every day to make people's lives just a little bit better to deliver all of the assistance that we can possibly deliver and to do it is as soon as possible and we're here less than 24 hours after the hurricane passed through our state we're still in a search and rescue mode we're not recovering yet we're still responding and trying to save lives and then and then we will be transitioning into uh to the response mode us uh as well but but i just want to reassure the people that we are going uh to get through this and and we're a good strong resilient faithful people and we know how to be good to one another no matter what our political philosophies might be or divisions we might have about other things when it comes to natural disasters we do see one another as brothers and sisters for me as a catholic christian brothers and sisters in christ and we respond that way and and that's going to continue and we're going to work just as hard as we can every single day but it isn't going to be fast and it's not going to be perfect yes ma'am yeah well uh what i can tell you is that it was very frustrating probably nobody was more frustrated than i was when i couldn't get first-hand reports from mayors and parish presidents earlier today but i think you're going to see one of the differences is that we had enough redundant means of communication that we never lost all communication for example when the email system went down we couldn't do the web eoc requests that we typically receive from the parishes but we very quickly had a workaround where they could continue to request assistance another difference i think you're going to see these systems back up much much quicker i haven't confirmed it yet but on my way in i got a a message from att and they believe their system is back up and since 9-1-1 systems in many cases are pegged to that system i think you're going to see that that's back up so so things are coming back up much faster than we've seen before as as well but yeah it's frustrating because you put in communications infrastructure to assist you uh all the time but especially when you have a disaster and when a disaster uh you know renders that communication uh ineffective it is extremely frustrating but we have enough redundancy in the system and the system is hardened enough that we can get it back online uh much faster and and i expect that that right now for example the overwhelming majority of communications that need to take place are absolutely happening between gosep and all of the parishes well look thank you all very much i do appreciate you all for working to continue to provide coverage for this i do want to ask one more time for the people of southeast louisiana to do everything you can to follow the guidance that you're given from your local officials make sure you you are aware of and and and that you conform to whatever curfews may be in place that you don't come back until it is safe for you to do so uh and and that you'll actually have some of the basic necessities of life like electricity and water and so forth and that we all check on our neighbors and our family especially those who are elderly or have special needs and then let's work together and let's lift one another up in prayer we're going to get through this and and it may not seem like it but every single day will be a day where we take a step forward and we will be making improvements and that's going to happen all across southeast louisiana with the partnership the federal government and the state and all of our um folks around the various parishes especially those local first responders and the volunteer groups the faith-based organizations the non-profits all of whom step up and move extremely fast and and that's all going to come online very quickly too so thank you all very much we will announce our next press conference at some point in the future thank you ma'am him