The End Is Near For Louisiana Hurricane Ida Victims

The deadline to file a lawsuit for Hurricane Ida damage is quickly approaching in Louisiana. The deadline is August 29, 2023—two months from now.

If you are a policyholder, public adjuster representing a policyholder, or a contractor waiting for the policyholder to get paid by the insurance company for Hurricane Ida damage, the end is near. You need to hire competent and trusted lawyers to help.

I remember that so many people waited until the last minute to file after Hurricane Katrina that the lines for filing lawsuits ran outside the courthouse in New Orleans. While times have changed and internet filing makes this much less complicated, now is the time to obtain counsel and get the case properly prepared for a lawsuit.  

Louisiana judges have been very proactive and want the cases to proceed to an early mediation. Lawyers have to provide full disclosures soon after those cases are filed. Our recent experience is that Louisiana courts are moving these matters along in a comparatively quick fashion. I noted the mediation program in Hurricane Ida Voluntary Mediation Program For Residential Claims.

Hurricane Ida was a devastating hurricane. A web article, Hurricanes in Louisiana, noted the following regarding Hurricane Ida:

In 2021 another deadly storm impacted Louisiana, quickly becoming the second-most damaging and intense hurricane to land in Louisiana, ranking behind Hurricane Katrina. With winds of 150 mph at landfall, Ida tied Hurricane Laura and the 1856 Last Island Hurricane as the strongest to impact the state. With devastating flooding and tornados, particularly to New Orleans and surrounding areas, occurring on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Ida was scarily familiar to the state. Unlike during Hurricane Katrina, though, New Orleans’s levees held up to the storm’s impact, but downed power lines left more than a million people without electricity in the state’s eastern half. The outage lasted weeks for many, and in some areas like Terrebonne Parish, it lasted months. As the fourth-costliest hurricane to impact the United States, Ida caused $75.25 billion in damages and thirty deaths in the state. Tragically, due to the extended power loss, many Louisianans turned to using generators, resulting in 141 hospitalizations and four deaths due to carbon monoxide poisoning.

Wikipedia noted the following regarding Hurricane Ida:

…Ida intensified to Category 2 strength by 00:00 UTC on August 29, and into a Category 4 hurricane six hours later, as it moved northwestward toward the Louisiana coast. At around 12:00 UTC that day, Ida reached its peak intensity, with 1-minute sustained wind speeds of 150 mph… and a minimum central barometric pressure of 929 mbar (27.43 inHg), while located not far southwest the mouth of the Mississippi River. During this intensification phase, the maximum winds increased 70 mph (110 km/h) and the central pressure dropped 57 mbar (1.683 inHg). At peak, the hurricane displayed a pronounced satellite presentation, with a near-symmetrical structure and a well-defined eye with an impressive stadium effect visible. Strengthening was then halted as the storm began an eyewall replacement cycle, forming a second, larger eyewall around the first one, but Ida remained near its peak intensity. At 16:55 UTC, Ida made its third, and final, landfall near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, with sustained winds of 150 mph… and a central pressure of 931 mbar (27.49 inHg), tying the 1856 Last Island hurricane and Hurricane Laura as the strongest landfalling hurricane on record in Louisiana, as measured by maximum sustained wind, and trailing only Hurricane Katrina, as measured by central pressure at landfall.  A ship at sea near the point of landfall verified this intensity, with reported gusts as high as 172 mph….

Those strong wind speeds were devastating.  

Merlin Law Group has three full-time Louisiana-based attorneys available to help with Hurricane Ida lawsuits. So please do not wait any further. If your insurance company has not paid you, now is the time to seek help and get a lawsuit filed before it is too late.   

Quote of the Day About Hurricanes and Disasters

East and Gulf Coast states are at risk of hurricanes; prairie and other central and southern states are constantly threatened by tornados; and western states commonly face damaging droughts. Extreme weather does not discriminate by American geography.

—Matt Cartwright