C-M grad rides out Hurricane Ida inside New Orleans home
Boarded-up windows in New Orleans bear graffiti.
Canon-McMillan graduate Annie Preaux and her fiance Travis Fink rode out Hurricane Ida in their New Orleans home.
A Starbucks sign lies among debris created by Hurricane Ida.
The aftermath of Hurricane Ida in the Irish Channel neighborhood of New Orleans where Annie Preaux and Travis Fink live
A Cecil Township native who rode out Hurricane Ida inside her New Orleans home said the storm was unlike anything she had ever experienced.
Annie Preaux moved to New Orleans in 2015, where she and her fiance, Travis Fink, are studying for doctorates at Tulane University.
At that time, Preaux was aware the city is vulnerable to hurricanes “but didn’t worry too much then,” and she has experienced the Big Easy’s bad weather.
“I was here for Zeta last year, but this was my first major storm,” said Preaux, 29, a 2010 graduate of Canon-McMillan High School.
Preaux and Fink, 30, originally from Greensburg, decided to hunker down and shelter inside a bedroom closet in their house in the Irish Channel neighborhood of New Orleans.
“We decided to stay in the city because the evacuation call came really late, and most people thought the storm would stay far enough west from us,” explained Preaux.
Instead, Ida strengthened and shifted east.
It made landfall Sunday afternoon with 150 mph winds, the fifth strongest to ever hit the United States mainland.
“I felt the most concern on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning because you’re just waiting and waiting, and you don’t know if you made the right decision to stay. Especially Sunday morning because I woke up to news (Ida) shifted east and might strengthen to a category 5,” she said.
Preaux said the power at her house went out about noon Sunday, hours before the rest of New Orleans lost power.
The couple live east of where the worst of Hurricane Ida struck, but Preaux said a news station a few miles from her home registered a wind gust of 110 mph.
“Sunday was a long day,” Preaux said.
For Preaux, the worst of the storm hit between 4 and 9 p.m.
“We spent several hours sheltering in a bedroom closet so we could stay away from windows,” said Preaux.
When the rain stopped Monday, Preaux walked through her neighborhood “and realized how extensive the damage was.”
Her home made it through the storm, but she saw trees down, wires hanging, and damaged homes.
“There are shingles everywhere. I saw several broken windows,” she said.
Preaux’s neighborhood sits about two feet above sea level – considered high ground in New Orleans – and her house is about two blocks from the Mississippi River, but it is protected by the levee system, which prevented flooding in her street.
Preaux is among an estimated 1 million who remain without power.
But Preaux said she and Fink were well prepared for the storm and have plenty of supplies. The couple, she said, would consider leaving when the streets are safe to drive.
“At this point, I’m just waiting for updates about power and when the streets will be clear,” she said.