NEW ORLEANS — Mayor LaToya Cantrell says a driver in New Orleans drowned during Hurricane Ida, which may raise the storm’s death toll to two.
Cantrell says additional details about the death would come from the coroner’s office, but those were not immediately forthcoming.
“This case remains under investigation,” coroner’s spokesman Jason Melancon said when asked in an email about Cantrell’s statement. He would not answer specific questions about whether the coroner’s office is investigating a drowning death or an Ida-related death.
A person also was killed outside Baton Rouge amid the storm when a tree fell on a home, authorities said.
The name of either victim have yet to be released.
Rescuers set out in hundreds of boats and helicopters to reach people trapped by floodwaters, and utility repair crews rushed in, after a furious Hurricane Ida swamped the Louisiana coast and ravaged the electrical grid in the sticky, late-summer heat.
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