our vaughn hilliard is there. >> reporter: eight days after ida, half a million in louisiana are still without power. some communities surrounded by standing water, homes gone. >> there's not a person on this side that's not suffering >> reporter: katie arias' home overtaken by floodwaters furniture tossed to the mud. >> you're drowning and you're reaching up and saying help me and no one's coming. >> reporter: officials say the total number of destroyed power poles higher than hurricanes katrina, ike, delta and zeta combined the national guard now operating a floating bridge to one town completely cut off by floodwaters. these waters and mud with nowhere to go >> the mud keeps coming and coming and coming, you know. >> reporter: concerns also rising about the most vulnerable. >> no lights, no water. no hot water, no hot meals or nothing >> reporter: over the weekend, 600 residents evacuated from eight senior centers after the health department deemed them unfit for ongoing occupancy. >> nobody showed up, nobody not one person showed up to come check on us >> reporter: the city says fi

nbc's shaq brewster joins us from new orleans and vaughn hilliard in houma, louisiana. shaq to you, hundreds of thousands without power and will be for weeks and weeks. what are you seeing in new orleans? i think they did get some power back there for some critical structures. >> that's right. power is slowly coming back unevenly and the president when he finally lands here in louisiana, one thing that will be unavoidable is the lines. this is one of the gas lines and it goes through one parking lot, that's not even one parking lot and all of the way through this and you see lines weaving. this one is about an hour long and at one point over the week it got up to four hours long. you not only see lines at gas stations. you see this at grocery stores and you see this for ice all across the city and all of these problems are because of the lack of power that you're hearing. we did get an update from the main energy provider here in the greater new orleans area and they're expecting to provide and restore power for folks here by the middle of next week. so they're days awa

. >> joining me from louisiana, nbc news national reporters vaughn hilliard. from new jersey, gabe gutierrez and from washington, nbc news white house correspondent kelly o'donnell. we're going to start with you. you're in louisiana. let's put up a map to give viewers a sense of where you r so the temperature, vaughn, it's about 90 degrees there. it feels like 100 with the humidity. i saw report earlier from you. there are ferrying fire trucks across the river because the bridge is gone. how is the response going? >> yeah. you know, the temperatures have actually decreased significantly from this morning here. because of the overcast and it's rain throughout the morning here. it is bringing the temperatures down. but when you look at laffit, what you see when you go overhead, essentially is a swamp like atmosphere here. you can see the gentleman here driving through the rain waters that exist here. it is a mud swampy area here. this man with his ford was able to get through here. clearly knows the roads better than others around here. we actually just an hour

and vaughn hilliard, our best to you and your crew.re thing before we go. tomorrow we'll see the next big mission in this new era of space tourism. spacex is scheduled to send first crew of private citizens into orbit. jarrod isaacman booked the capsule last year and picked tleed people to join him. isaacman won't say exactly how much the trip costs. except that it was less than $200 million. okay. his fellow passengers include a st. jude physician assistant, a cancer vufror, a geology professor who dreamed of being a astronaut and a data engineer for lockheed mart whoun is a self professed space geek. now the inspiration four crew will embark on a mission that is more perilous than those recently taun by billionaire space tourists richard branson and jeff bezos. the inspiration crew will blast all the way into orbit, travel around the planet at thousands of miles an hour for about three days and then blast back through the atmosphere and splash down into the sea. and we will cover all of it from top to bottom. that does it for us own

vaughn hilliard is about 60 miles southwest. good to see you again.sident will be meeting with officials in new orleans. he will also visit other hardhit areas. >> the president is running about an hour behind schedule, but i did just hear marine one take off from the south lawn from here. once he does arrive he will be spending four to five hours on the ground meeting with local officials and he will be going to some of these neighborhoods that were hardest hit by ida. then he will receive a briefing on what is being done, the emergency respond, before taking an ariel tour. that's why he has to see them from above. meeting with people, directly impacted, and he will also be trying to highlight what fema has been able to do so far with the department of housing and urban development and talk about this collision of climate crisis. affect what we also saw in the wildfires out west. he will be highlighting all of that, and he will urge congress to do that while he is there standing in front of all of this destruction and devastation that we saw from thi

first vaughn hilliard in louisiana for us this morning, and vaughn, how are those recovery efforts going? >> they're tough here, you know, we're eight days into this now but at the same time when you look at some of the aerial footages that was shot just last night here, you have essentially a swamp of standing water, mud, and you know the national guard is on site and others here, other community members, they're trying their best to clear some of the sludge out here. the forecast shows significant rainfall here this afternoon and there is still a community here without power and they're told not to expect it for up to, potentially the end of this month here. this is tough, businesses are closes, schools are closed, and you heard you mentioned the nursing homes. there was seven nursing homes shut down after more than 800 residents were forced into essentially a warehouse where they had cots on the ground. filthy water. they had to exist in their own waste. the conditions were atrocious. seven individuals now confirmed dead following that storm. and there are now six senior centers that

vaughn hilliard has the latest from new orleans. >> reporter: the folks in this community today are strugglingfact that we expect rain here throughout the afternoon. just in the last hour more rain came down. we're standing in water and mud here and it making it difficult as people try to clean out their homes and their vehicles, but this weather situation makes it worse. there is half a million people here without power. i want you to listen to one individual here. about they're own situation. >> i love these people, they're my family and they're all suffering. they're all suffering. there is not a person hear that is not is your honoring. these are the worst conditions i have ever seen. >> folks are trying, but it is so difficult here when you're dealing with these persisting complications. people are just trying to clear out more mud and sludge. you have power line crews here in indiana and michigan. they were all here trying to do their best to get out. >> the devastation is unbelievable. let's bring in josh letterman who is jefferson parish. you're at a distribution point, what's the scen

joining me is vaughn hilliard. thanks for hanging with us through the rain there.use more rain. that is for darn sure. what do you see in the wake of recovery efforts? cleanup efforts as the situation there remains pretty horrific with some folks without electricity? >> right. you said it. there is no wind here right now either. it's sweltering heat, humidity. it was 95 trees earlier or just here in the last 20 minutes the rain starts to come down. in lafitte, essentially you have what a standing swamp. water and mud here. we are standing on the one riot of passage, one roadway allowing folks to gain access to their properties. it's standing water and mud here at this point. their homes are devastated here and just trying to get further back and begin to have some sort of reckoning of what they could potentially be able to rebuild in the weeks and months ahead is so still so difficult because we are talking about power being out for up to four weeks. four to six weeks here. i want you to listen to one of the residents we talked to this afternoon. katie arias here t

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