New Orleans has imposed a night-time curfew to prevent crime on its darkened streets after Hurricane Ida knocked out power to the city.
The curfew will run from 8 p.m. until 6 a.m. and will be enforced by the city’s police as well as members of the Louisiana National Guard, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said in a press briefing Tuesday. Emergency personnel will be exempted from the curfew, which begins Tuesday night.
“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. He said the department had already made “numerous arrests” for looting following Ida, but he declined to give a number, saying he didn’t want to create a “false narrative” that the city was out of 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.”
Ida knocked out all eight power transmission lines that feed electricity into the city when the storm roared ashore Sunday. Cantrell said in the briefing that executives with utility Entergy Corp. told her some transmission to the city would be restored late Wednesday afternoon or evening. That did not mean, however, that the whole city would have power.
It could mean we do see some level of electricity or light in the city come tomorrow,” Cantrell said. “But again, the expectation should not be — because it’s not a real one — that the entire city will be lit tomorrow evening.
