National Guard Members Still At Work Assisting Ida Victims, Communities

Thousands of Louisiana National Guard members are still on the job helping victims of Ida in the southeast coastal communities. Spokesperson Noel Collins tells us what some of the citizen-soldiers are doing to assist in the recovery. She says, “We’ve had engineer teams at work clearing different canals, clearing roadways, we’ve had generator support missions.”

Collins says many of the guard members have been working to get commodities to those in need. including the distribution “of 6.2-million meals, 307-thousand tarps, 7.8 million liters of water and 1.3 million bags of ice.”

More than three weeks after Ida made landfall, the guard is still helping out in many ways, but the number of soldiers still on duty has diminished significantly according to Collins.  “We currently we still have more than two thousand four hundred service members actively engaged in the recovery efforts,” according to Collins who says that figure at the highest point of deployment was just shy of nine thousand.

She says the guard still has 12 points of distribution for meals, water, ice and tarps operating in four parishes, down from 80 pods at the start statewide.