The fifth most powerful hurricane to strike the United States blasted ashore in southern Louisiana on August 29, bringing rainfall and floods before moving north and east into Mississippi and Alabama the following day.

At least nine deaths were reported in Louisiana as of late last week, but state officials fear that number will end up much higher when the floodwaters recede.

Last Monday, a man was attacked by an alligator in some of those flooded Louisiana waters. The attack near Slidell, which is just across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, resulted in the man losing his arm and disappearing in the flood waters, officials said.

Hurricane Ida, which made landfall near Port Fourchon, Louisiana, as a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of about 150 mph, has drawn comparisons to 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which slammed New Orleans, leaving more than 1,800 people dead and becoming one of the costliest storms in American history.

Around the time Hurricane Katrina hit, Anselmo was in the process of kicking hard drugs in order to get a doctor to operate on his back. While he was going through detox, he was splitting time in Houston and Waco, Texas, before he could return home three months later.

In a 2005 interview, Anselmo spoke about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, explaining, “I was stuck in a hotel room for two and a half weeks in Houston, Texas, with my Rottweiler, my other dog, and this cat I’ve had since 1992 or something. I wasn’t even sure he was going to make it because of the trauma, but he’s a tough bastard.” He added, “I was surrounded by all sorts of different people from New Orleans, who were working class, earning week-to-week salaries just to buy groceries and pay rent, and everything that had was gone. Just to think about the city, its culture, its characters, just the bands that have come out of here over the last 20 years, scattered and literally washed away.”