A fire broke out this morning on the third floor of New Orleans City Hall, WWL is reporting.
The fire apparently was near the city's data center; and within minutes officials had posted that the city's websites were down.
"All nola.gov websites are currently down right now, including ready.nola.gov," a post on the city's Facebook page states. "We'll be communicating important Hurricane #Ida information via social media and over text. Text NOLAREADY to 77295."
The station interviewed councilwoman Helena Moreno, who told them there was a fire on the third floor, which is the city's data center. The fire was put out quickly, she said. She told the station that she was being allowed back in to attend a meeting on the ninth floor.
She said there had been communications issues all morning - email, phone - and that the city's generator contractors were on site as well, so a generator might be involved.
Here's the post from WWL with the interview:
