[foreboding music playing]
[man speaking]
[man] Tractor trailer right here!
[thunder rumbling]
[man speaking]
[water gushing]
[electric sparks]
[man speaking]
[radio chattering]
[man screams]
[thunder rumbling]
This morning, ahead of Hurricane Ida,
it is an absolute ghost town on Bourbon Street.
This is the French Quarter.
So the hope is
that these buildings will be able to survive
what could be the worst hurricane
ever to make landfall
in the state of Louisiana.
I'm Jonathan Petramala
and I'm a documentarian journalist for 20 years.
I focus on extreme weather.
Hurricane Ida is heading towards New Orleans,
part of the country that I have a huge place
in my heart for,
and it makes you hurt because you know
that that place that you love
is not going to be the same the day after.
My partner, Brandon and I get there beforehand
to document what's happening.
[Steve] We are west of the storm.
We have ominous news coming from the hurricane hunters
as they continue to track Hurricane Ida.
It is strengthening.
It has sustained winds
at 150 miles per hour.
[Jonathan] As a journalist,
you don't wanna scare anybody.
But we have seen what can happen
with Hurricane Katrina.
And you have a hurricane stronger than Katrina
heading for that same spot.
It's terrifying.
[Pastor Durant] I was born in New Orleans.
And since Katrina, you know, we kind of learned
to just ride storms out.
My kids and my wife, we stayed in New Orleans.
- [girl 1] Look what I do. - [girl 2] Let's go now.
That morning, kids kind of was running around, still playing.
And then you see people making last preparations.
You see people boarding up their houses
and, you know, starting to get a little quiet.
You know, it started to get a little dark,
the sky started to get a little dark.
You can feel the wind blowing.
But we figured, "Hey, this storm can't be a Katrina."
[news reporter] All right. Now, we just got the 11:00 a.m. update.
Landfall will probably happen a little bit before noon
with a Category 4, 185 mile per hour winds.
Those 185 mile per hour winds are gonna be right in here.
And that is gonna just hammer Port Fourchon and Grand Isle.
[suspenseful music playing]
[man 1 speaking]
[Jamie speaking]
[Jamie Lyons] It was the morning of the storm.
We were watching our local news.
And we would just slowly watch it
getting closer and closer
and closer to us.
Once the power was out, we were just left in the dark.
Things started slowly intensifying.
And I had my Nikon cameras, so I just was like,
"Man, I'll just take a couple of videos
to show people what these storms are about."
We made the last minute decision to stay.
It was just a... It was a split second decision.
We weren't prepared for it.
But of course we thought we were,
but you really can't prepare for something like that.
[people screaming]
[Jamie speaking]
- [woman speaking] - [Jamie speaking]
[woman speaking]
[Jamie speaking]
[woman] Oh, no. That can't be good.
[Jamie speaking]
[television chattering]
[Jamie speaking]
The storm kept getting stronger and stronger.
If this house falls down, I'm gonna get hurt for sure.
[news reporter speaking indistinctly]
[Jamie speaking]
[news reporter speaking indistinctly]
[Jamie speaking]
All you could do is just really hunker down
and just pray for the best, you know?
Oh, my God.
[man speaking]
[Jonathan] The hurricane is making its way
from the coast up towards where we are in New Orleans.
I already see the outer band's here.
Hurricane Ida,
these clouds are moving around in that cyclonic action,
might be one of the worst days in history
for Louisiana or New Orleans.
We're constantly scanning through radar
as well as satellite because these storms
make little adjustments on their path.
[man speaking]
Oh, oh.
Oh.
[man speaking]
[Jonathan] Hurricane Ida is a major hurricane
and it's heading right towards the biggest population center
in the State of Louisiana.
Because New Orleans is essentially in a bowl,
the most dangerous part of a hurricane
is not the wind, it's the water.
So this is the storm reduction system behind me.
You can see the floodgate blocking the highway.
This is Highway 90 and you can see what's ahead of me,
the storm surge, just the beginning of it.
This is what these levees were rebuilt for.
Hurricane Ida is gonna be the first real test
this has had since they were rebuilt after Katrina.
[news anchor] Possibility of 15 to 20 inches of rain
in New Orleans, your concerns about that?
We are seeing life-threatening flash flooding
from this intense rainfall,
life-threatening storm surges.
[Jonathan] My partner, Brandon and I,
we wanna go closer
to where the core of the storm is.
We know we are driving into danger.
It's kind of like an apocalyptic movie.
That water was really high.
So I was fully expecting
to come across a corpse in that car.
[Brandon speaking]
It's the most scared I've ever been in a hurricane
because I don't know what I'm going to see.
I don't know what I'm gonna come across.
Am I going to be physically in danger
by this water myself?
Then I look over to my left and I see
more cars and more people
and I know more people are in trouble.
[woman screaming]
[Jonathan speaking]
[woman screaming]
[Jonathan speaking]
[sobbing]
[Jonathan speaking]
[indistinct chatter]
[Jonathan] These people were trapped and the hurricane
still blowing, the water still rising.
We got them around the deep water.
We were able to give them a little bit of shelter from the wind.
[Jonathan] We called 911.
And so we're doing all we can
to get them out of this wind,
out of this rain, out of this dangerous situation.
We planned on hunkering down.
We didn't plan on leaving at all.
You know, half the building had came down,
and so of course, the wife and kids wanted to leave.
The storm was still going on.
Now, the winds are still at probably
about 100 miles an hour, gusts,
you know, the roads flooded.
We get to that underpass.
And we couldn't go any further on I-10.
I heard people screaming,
people saying, "Help, help, help, help."
I just took my shoes off and I just took off
running out on the highway to see who needed help.
I look up and I notice
the man was unconscious
and so, hey,
you got to try to save his life.
[phone ringing]
[dispatcher speaking]
[Pastor Durant speaking]
I'm explaining to 911,
"Hey, man, you guys gotta get some help out here."
[man speaking]
[Pastor Durant speaking]
It was bad.
It didn't matter what I had to do.
I wanted to save him.
[wind gushing]
[Pastor Durant speaking]
I noticed the gentleman laying in the center of I-10.
I ran over,
started doing CPR on him.
Some other people came.
They helped.
I was on the phone with 911,
and I was trying to give them the location.
They sent one guy out in an ambulance.
[sirens wailing]
He checked his pulse.
I wanted him to live.
I wanted him to be alive.
[somber music playing]
[Pastor Durant] I went in my van and got a white sheet
and covered him up with a white sheet,
said a prayer over him.
And so I sat out there with them.
I can just see the sheet just...
[makes sound]
Finding James that night,
I got this real sad, eerie feeling.
I think about him every day, every day.
That was a scary night.
[tense music playing]
[Jonathan] New Orleans is not the same.
You're seeing this beautiful city torn to shreds.
It was like the entire place was a water world.
[Derick] Southeast Louisiana is composed of swamps
and wetlands, and it's also saturated
from heavy repetitive rain.
That gave Ida its energy source that allowed it
to maintain its structure and its power.
We started seeing reports from New Orleans,
and it was just devastating,
the destruction that we saw there.
As the hurricane was making its way up
through Mississippi, people in Louisiana were left
picking up the pieces
and desperately searching for survivors.
[Jonathan] And in New Orleans, they have a pumping system
and the flood protection walls.
Unfortunately, the entire coast of Louisiana
doesn't have the levee protection system
like New Orleans does.
[tense music playing]
[Vincent speaking]
I was born and raised in Lafitte, Louisiana.
My community raised me.
The bayous raised me,
the marshes, the swamps.
When a hurricane comes, we all work together.
Me and my buddy Evan, we had one mission, go in,
help our neighbors, help whoever we can.
[Evan speaking]
[Vincent speaking]
There's an elderly woman, Ms. Emily,
who's on oxygen and they haven't heard
from her since yesterday.
Her daughter reached out to me.
[Vincent speaking]
[woman speaking]
[Vincent speaking]
[woman speaking]
[Vincent speaking]
It all happened so fast.
When I've seen where she was located,
I knew it was gonna be bad
because that's where it hit the worst at.
[Vincent speaking]
- [Evan speaking] - [Vincent speaking]
[Evan speaking]
[Vincent speaking]
Lord, please let her have found a way out,
because if she's in this house, it ain't good.
[Evan speaking]
[Vincent speaking]
[Evan speaking]
[Vincent speaking]
- [Evan speaking] - [Vincent speaking]
[panting]
[dogs barking]
[Vincent speaking]
We decided to get out the house
and go talk to the neighbor.
[Vincent speaking]
- [man speaking] - [Vincent speaking]
[man speaking]
[Vincent speaking]
[tense music playing]
[Vincent] We're looking for Ms. Emily.
Looking and I guess about 15 minutes goes by,
felt like a lifetime.
It's like she never left. She's in there.
We gotta find her.
I was afraid of what we might find, you know.
We flipped every piece of furniture over
and really tear this house apart.
And my buddy Evan, when he looked down,
she was right down between, like,
the kitchen cabinets and the refrigerator.
She had unfortunately passed away.
We just felt like what if we could've got there
a little bit sooner?
I instantly thought of how it might have been
for her in those last few moments.
[dramatic music playing]
[Nora] She was just such an amazing person
that she tried to help out anybody
and everybody she could.
I just want my mom back.
And I'm sorry she had to suffer.
[dramatic music playing]
But then I told my buddy, you know, we gotta go back.
And then we went and get her dogs
and brought them to a relative,
a family member of Ms. Emily.
We couldn't make it in time for Ms. Emily but being able
to get those dogs back to her family was a good feeling.
That's just what we do down there.
We help each other.
[Derick] Two days after Ida made landfall
and we're still tracking it as it's heading our way.
As Ida made its way over Mississippi and West Virginia,
it started to lose some of its strength.
But then things start to change.
You've got this hot storm
coming from the Caribbean
colliding with a cold front from Canada
and it really turns into a completely different animal.
What was even scarier was that this storm
was now headed on up to Pennsylvania,
New Jersey, and New York.
[reporter speaking]
Impact in 14.0--
This has now created a storm that is much more powerful.
What that's going to mean is torrential downpours
of flooding, even tornadoes.
[thunders crashing]
[man speaking]
[Mike] Where we are in South Jersey,
there's no thought to, well, there's gonna be something
really big coming through, 'cause this is South Jersey.
Nothing usually happens
in South Jersey.
[alarm blaring]
[Mike speaking]
- [Joanne speaking] - [Mike speaking]
[Joanne speaking]
[Mike speaking]
[Mark speaking]
[alarm blaring]
[Mark speaking]
We got into the basement with less than 10 seconds to spare.
[Mike speaking]
[Joanne speaking]
I didn't really grasp what was going on until we went down,
and within seconds later,
we heard the freight train come through.
The most ominous sound you could ever imagine.
[Mark speaking]
[Derick] This is a terrifying situation
for people in New Jersey.
This is not just any tornado.
This is EF3 with wind speeds
of up to 150 miles an hour.
[Mike] When we were in the basement,
we could hear the tornado hitting our house.
It was just this sickening, crunching, ripping sound.
[Mark speaking]
[objects clattering]
[Mark speaking]
And then there was complete silence.
I come up the steps and I look,
and we looked up and all we saw was the sky.
And I just kinda sat on the foyer floor
and I started to cry 'cause I couldn't believe
what my eyes were seeing.
When we walked outside, it was like a warzone.
There were just debris everywhere.
You do realize that was probably not very survivable.
[Derick] Very shortly after Ida hits New Jersey,
it's classified as one of the deadliest weather disasters
in the state's history
with several fatalities already reported.
In Cranford, just like some of the other towns around it,
residents there are being taken by surprise
by the rapid flash flooding.
[tense music playing]
[Janice] I live with my husband and my four boys.
We went to bed around 11:30,
and around 2:30 in the morning,
my son came running in and told me
that water was coming through the basement window.
The water was just pushing through and my two boys
have their bedrooms down there,
so we just tried to pick things up off the floor.
And then by 4:00 is when everything changed.
[water crashes]
[Joel] Mom! Mom!
Mom! Mom!
Mom!
Mom! Mom!
We heard the wall and the foundation just break.
- [water crashes] - [Joel] Mom!
Mom! Mom!
[Janice] All I could hear was the crashing of the water
and screaming.
My son was just yelling.
[Joel] Mom! Mom!
[Janice] I was in the utility room.
When I opened my eyes, I had about four inches to breathe.
That's how high the water was to the ceiling.
Me and my son, Joel, were trapped down there.
And I can't swim.
I definitely thought I was going to die.
My husband decided he would go outside
so that maybe he could pull us out through one of the windows.
Joel had to like swim a little bit
and then he eventually did pull him out.
My husband then went to go look for me.
He grabbed me by my arms and just slid me out
onto the ground,
and he just held me.
I said, "I can't believe you saved me."
And my son looks over, my second son, Mateo,
and he looks at me and he says,
"Mom, you're alive?" And I said, "Yes."
And the four of us just hugged each other.
[boat engine rumbles]
[Janice] In that moment, the firemen pulled up
in like a raft and took us away.
[train horn honks]
[Derick] We're starting to get reports that people
living in these densely populated areas
in river or floodplains
are in grave danger.
Some towns are seeing
10 inches of rain in just a few hours.
[Mitesh] I was a retail pharmacist.
And even with the storm approaching,
it wasn't even on my mind 'cause I was so focused
on what I had to do at work.
I lived in Rahway, New Jersey with my wife Nirali.
And we just had a newborn called Anjeli.
My wife and child were at home at that time.
[Nirali speaking]
[Mitesh] My wife had called and said that
the water was approaching our steps.
My wife did send me a few videos.
And then one of the videos she had sent was our basement.
[Nirali speaking]
As the hours progressed,
my sump pumps... I have two sump pumps
and a French drain and all the things
to stop flooding coming into my home,
those all started to break one by one.
Some pipe or some line must have gotten loose
from one of the walls and leaked
and caused the gas to fill up our home.
[tense music playing]
[Nirali speaking]
There was water coming out from the windows
of the basement.
And around that time
is when I made the decision
to leave because it was just too much.
Leaving at that moment felt dangerous.
Never in a million years
would I have expected
what happened to my home.
[explosion]
[Justin] 19. Yeah, I'm on foot.
Yeah, I'll keep calling for help.
It was my day off
but I knew it in my heart that no matter what,
I was gonna go to work because I know
I could be a help to maybe one person.
- [woman speaking] - [Justin speaking]
- Yes. - [Justin speaking]
Yes. [woman speaking]
[Justin speaking]
You could tell she was like
really struggling to hold on.
I heard the fire trucks come.
They sent swift water rescue guys.
[man 1 speaking]
[man 2 speaking]
They get her across safely.
That was my sigh of relief.
If we didn't go try and help her,
she could have died.
It's just very emotional.
[tense music playing]
[Nirali] When I left after grabbing everything
and putting it into the cars,
I really did think I made the wrong decision.
I thought that I was being a baby
and I thought that I could have handled this, you know?
[explosion]
It was one of those moments
where you wake up and you're like,
"Wow, I'm so thankful."
[thunder rumbling]
[Derick] I'm in New York and, basically, it's like
a tsunami hitting the city.
The National Weather Service office in New York declared
its first-ever flash flood emergency.
[tense music playing]
[woman 1 speaking]
[woman 2 screams]
[woman 3] Oh. Oh, God.
[woman 4 speaking]
[woman 5 speaking]
[man speaking]
We were dispatched to a neighborhood in Queens
where there were reports of basements flooding.
Officers are called to a flooded basement
apartment in Queens where they tried
to rescue a young couple and their two-year-old son.
Unfortunately, the family didn't make it.
[car horn honking]
[thunder rumbling]
[Derick] I remember interviewing a woman
who was in her apartment, in her basement apartment,
the water is rushing in, flooding down the stairs.
She's screaming for help.
She finally gets a neighbor's attention.
I remember talking to her a couple of hours
after that rescue and she was just in tears.
[Amrita] We have lost a son.
We have lost a sister.
This is... Yeah, we... I cannot comprehend.
No one... The emotions here.
I can't speak for everyone.
There is only sadness,
and it's just overwhelming.
I've never seen anything like that when we got there
and saw the sheer terror that these people felt
in the final moments of their lives.
It is something that will stick with me
for the rest of my life.
[melancholic music playing]
Hurricane Ida was the most scared I've ever been in a hurricane.
And I just did the best I could.
Hurricane Ida cost lives of folks all the way
from Louisiana into New Jersey.
Lives and families that are gonna be impacted
for generations because of what one storm caused.
I think about what would have happened
if we stayed a lot.
I don't think I would be here.
I'm so thankful my daughter is able to see another day.
Those are moments where I'm like...
I'm just grateful.
[Mitesh] There really was nothing salvageable from the home.
Everything material is lost.
But...
I didn't lose my family that day.
I was just so thankful that we were all okay.
It really makes you understand
and appreciate everything you have
and realize that the little things, they don't matter.
[melancholic music playing]
That night was life-changing
for me and for my family.
I ended up moving to Galveston, Texas.
And now I have my own church.
Galveston is hurricane-prone, you know,
and so I've already told my wife,
I said, "I'm not leaving.
If a hurricane come, I'mma stay here
and I'm gonna help people. You guys go,
but I'm gonna stay here. That's my mission."
[melancholic music playing]