Photos show Ida’s devastating impact on coastal Louisiana from above

Louisiana’s coastal communities—a network of fisheries, oil and gas hubs, and wildlife refuges—saw catastrophic damage from Hurricane Ida.

Grand Isle in Jefferson Parish, a far south coastal town reachable by only one major highway, is a barrier island that suffered extensive damage from Hurricane Ida. Just how much damage the popular vacation and fishing spot suffered is still being assessed.

Photograph by Ben Depp, National Geographic

Photographs byBen Depp

Captions byNational Geographic Staff

August 31, 2021

5 min read

Some of the places hardest hit by Hurricane Ida’s Category 4 winds lie just south of New Orleans—a region of fishing villages, wildlife refuges, and oil and gas facilities. Once a site of healthy, expansive coastal wetlands, the region is now slowly eroding into the sea. It includes the Isle de Jean Charles, home to the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe, a community billed as the nation’s first climate refugees.

As Louisiana loses these wetlands at the rate of a football field per hour, it loses not only critical fisheries but also a buffer that protects New Orleans and other towns to the north from deadly storm surges coming off the Gulf of Mexico. Major hurricanes like Ida, in turn, hasten the demise of the wetlands.

National Geographic photographer Ben Depp, who lives in New Orleans, rode out the storm at home. After Ida passed and it was safe to fly once again, he took these photographs of the storm’s extensive damage from an airplane.

The fishing community of Leeville, a town just 22 miles north of where Hurricane Ida made landfall in Port Fourchon, was decimated by the storm.

The community of Pointe-Aux-Chenes in Terrebonne Parish, at the top of the photo, flooded after Hurricane Ida. The neat rows of straight lines in the marsh are a part of a conservation project designed to reduce coastal marsh erosion by limiting the marsh-destroying impact of waves. The effort is led by conservation group Ducks Unlimited and funded by Chevron.

Grand Isle was on the east side of Hurricane Ida’s eye, the most dangerous position to be in when a hurricane blows through. Six people rode out the storm in a motel that’s now nearly entirely destroyed. They were evacuated by helicopter on Monday, the day after the storm made landfall.

Isle de Jean Charles in Terrebonne Parish was once on a much wider coastal marsh that was surrounded by healthy wetlands. Now, it’s a strip of houses on a lonely road surrounded by open water. Many of its former residents are members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe and considered the nation’s first climate refugees. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has spent $52 million to help residents move off their eroding island.

After the BP oil spill in 2010, large swaths of brown pelican habitat was damaged. Two years ago, Queen Bess Island was restored as a rookery for Louisiana’s state bird, regarded as a symbol of the Gulf Coast’s resilience. Seen here the day after the storm, the island is flooded; permanent damage has not been assessed.

Giant pumps at the West Closure Complex in Plaquemines Parish push water away from New Orleans after Hurricane Ida dumped more than a foot of rain over the region. The city’s skyline can be seen in the distance. The complex is part of a $14 billion system of levees, pumps, and floodgates built after Hurricane Katrina to prevent such damage from happening again.

An oil slick near Barataria Bay, a large area of coastal marshes south of New Orleans in Plaquemines Parish. As of Tuesday, the full extent of damage to offshore oil infrastructure from Hurricane Ida was still unclear.

Elmer’s Island, a town just south of Grand Isle, is home to a popular wildlife refuge that spans its coastal marshes, sand dunes, and beaches. Damage to the region is still unreported.

The National Geographic Society, committed to illuminating and protecting the wonder of our world, has funded Explorer Ben Depp's work. Learn more about the Society’s support of Explorers.