Yesterday Hurricane Ida came ashore in Louisiana. Today all of New Orleans is without power. My understanding at this point, which may be incorrect, is that at least two, and possibly all eight major transmission lines into the city have collapsed. This could take weeks or longer to repair.

I have to point out that these towers survived Katrina and lots of lesser storms and should have been able to handle Ida, which did little other property damage in the area. I am also led to believe that maintenance was deferred or even ignored in recent years. Surely multiple independent systems should not have failed like this. I’m going to shoot from the hip and blame for-profit infrastructure providers like Entergy who have every incentive to cut maintenance and boost profits.

i hope there is an investigation and people are held to account. But like the similar power event in Texas this winter, I am not expecting much.