Thibodaux, LA (1080 KRLD) - We're getting a bleak picture of the devastation along the Louisiana coast from Hurricane Ida through the eyes of a couple of Fort Worth firefighters helping out in the area.
"If we had to rate the damage, it's 100%," says Lt. Brant Frazier. "There is not a building, a boat, a vehicle or anything down here that rode out the storm that does not have some form of damage."
Frazier and others are in Lafourche Parish, Louisiana as part of TIFMAS Strike Team 121 and Texas Task Force One.
He says when Ida made landfall, the eyewall hovered over the parish for more than a half-day.
"They had sustained winds over 100 miles an hour," says Frazier, "(and) up to 170 to 180 mile an hour gusts for over 12 hours."
The storm has essentially left the parish uninhabitable.
"I don't foresee them having running water, especially in this parish, for probably months to come," Frazier says.
And it will be a long time before electricity can be restored.
"They're looking at four to six weeks out before they can even think about starting to restore some of the grid," says Frazier.
"When it gets dark, it's dark," adds Battalion Chief Bobby Fimbres. "You can't see anything."
While restoring utilities will take months, overall recovery will last a lot longer.
"This is not a storm where we're going to be able to recover from this in a week or two," Frazier says. "This is going to take months, even years, probably to recover."
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