Hurricane Ida made landfall Sunday in southern Louisiana as a ferocious Category 4 storm, tearing roofs from a hospital and homes, flooding roads and sending ferries adrift.
At least two people have died. A 60-year-old man died in Ascension Parish died after a tree fell on his home, and a man drowned in New Orleans after attempting to drive through floodwaters, officials said. Both are considered storm related, the state health department said.
Firefighters in Kenner struggled to put out more than a dozen fires. Officials said numerous breaks in the parish's water system have caused the fire department to have low pressure.
"Also, flooding and downed trees and power lines are making travel in the city quite dangerous," city officials told NBC affiliate WDSU of New Orleans in a statement.
The fire department said it will respond to the blazes as soon as a water source is available and when it is safe.
Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng told reporters earlier Sunday that the only road into Grand Isle, a barrier island south of New Orleans that is home to fewer than 1,000 people, was under 6 feet of water. The local fire station was flooded, she said, and a few dozen people appeared to have disregarded a mandatory evacuation order.
"The conditions are very, very bad," she said. "They are really getting beaten up right now."
Images posted on Facebook by someone who appeared to be riding out the storm in Grand Isle showed roads topped with white-capped waves and a parking lot submerged in water.
"Pray for us all," the person wrote.
The National Hurricane Center described Ida's storm surge as "catastrophic" and said it could measure as much as 16 feet at Port Fourchon, where it made landfall shortly before noon Sunday.
Elsewhere in southern Louisiana, the quick rise in sea level was expected to be less, the center said. But security camera video from a fire station in St. Bernard Parish, east of New Orleans, showed what was still a dramatic surge of water.
The storm made landfall with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph, and video and photos from areas in and around New Orleans showed roofs that had been ripped from buildings and, in one case, tossed down the road into a power line.
A video recorded taken in Port Fourchon showed strong waves crashing into a dock as Ida arrived.
"All I can say is WOW!!! The two things in life you NEVER underestimate, God & Mother Nature!!" Jeremy DiBenedetto wrote in a caption alongside two videos. "I'm not sure if anyone has ever gotten footage like this ever before, but the power of this storm is totally UNBELIEVABLE!!"
In St. Rose, just west of downtown New Orleans, a boat collision was captured on camera. A barge crashed into a bridge in Jefferson Parish, making it structurally unsafe, officials there said. It was one of more than a dozen of what a spokesman for the Coast Guard's local office described as "breakaway barges" in the region.
Ferries were also seen drifting in the area, WDSU reported.
In one instance, the regional transit authority told the station that the vessel had detached from a barge and run aground.
In St. Bernard Parish, where the Chalmette ferry could be seen floating upriver, parish President Guy McInnis told the station: "Nothing we can do at this point."
A photo posted on social media in downtown Thibodaux in Lafourche Parish showed cars completely destroyed and debris littered across the ground.
A video showed the roof being ripped off a hospital in Galliano, also in Lafourche.
In Terrebonne Parish, a resident in Houma recorded a video of a large tree being uprooted and crashing to the ground, narrowly missing the house.
A Houma resident, Theophilus Charles, 70, was also captured in a photo sitting in his badly damaged home.