Good morning. Welcome to Morning, Joe. It is Monday, August 30th. I'm Willie Geist. Louisiana residents are sheltering in place this morning as Ida, one of the most powerful storms ever to hit the country, continues to crawl across the state and the Gulf Coast. At least one person is dead.

After a tree fell in a home near Baton Rouge, the storm made landfall early yesterday

as a category four storm on the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. After hours over land,

Ida now has been downgraded to a tropical storm that happened just within the last hour. As the

sun rises this morning, we will get our first look at some of the extreme damage across the Gulf Coast.

This is just some of the destruction in Golden Meadow, Louisiana. That's about an hour south of New Orleans.

In New Orleans, the historic French quarter was hit hard with significant damage.

Still dark there, but as the sun comes up, we'll have a better

feel for things. Storm winds knocked out the city's power in all. More than one million people

there are without electricity. The power outage could make the area more susceptible to extreme

flooding like we see in this video from Grand Isle, Louisiana right along the Gulf Coast.

Join us now from New Orleans, NBC News reporter Jay Gray.

Jay, good morning.

The power is out in New Orleans.

What does it look like this morning?

Willie, it is a mess right now, and you're right.

Once we get some sunshine, I think we're going to see even more problems in New Orleans. But a break in the conditions, the winds dropped off the rain, thankfully, after about 16 straight hours has stopped. And it gives us a chance to take a look at some of the devastation here. Take a look behind me. You can see the rooftop that was pulled from a building here, thrown into the French quarter, bringing down with it a sign, an elevated street sign.

You can see the brace there that's been bent and pulled to the ground.

It's pulled away shutters from doorways, those doorways thrown open by the wind.

We've got shattered windows in many of these buildings, alarms going off in most every block

of the French Quarter right now. And where did

the rooftop come from? Well, it came from across Decatur Street here. That's the Jack's Brewery

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