Porn videos interrupt Hurricane Ida meeting in Louisiana
Graphic pornography clips disrupted a Zoom meeting called on Wednesday by Louisiana’s utility regulator to discuss the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.
Five members of the state’s Public Service Commission (PSC) had met virtually to discuss electricity and phone outage issues in the aftermath of the hurricane, which made landfall on 29 August.
As the commissioners tried to speak, unknown participants shared their screens and played explicit pornographic videos. The Zoom meeting was forced to adjourn for 15 minutes till the issue was resolved.
“It was unfortunate and disgusting. Apparently, the hackers have adequate electricity and internet access,” PSC chair Craig Green told The Advocate newspaper.
The executive secretary of the group told the Fox 14 KARD news channel that there were multiple fraudulent accounts involved in the meeting. However, due to a law that mandates public meetings, the PSC had to conduct the hearing with a group of about 200 lawyers, lobbyists and company executives.
Once the meeting resumed, it continued uninterrupted for three and a half hours.
The PSC and electric companies have been facing several lawsuits and have come in for widespread criticism from Louisiana’s citizens after over 902,000 customers lost electricity in the aftermath of the hurricane.
One lawsuit alleged that the state’s largest electric utility used a “bubble gum and super glue” approach to maintenance and construction after the outage.
As of 20 September, at least 22,200 users were bereft of electricity in the state, with around 11,500 plunged into darkness in Louisiana’s Lafourche Parish alone.
The storm, which had winds gushing up to 150 km/h, wreaked havoc and caused flash floods and mass destruction in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee.
The hurricane destroyed 212 transmission structures and damaged another 296 across the American coastline. More than 36,000 distribution poles and 50,000 spans of wire fell, affecting 1,098,433 users.
In the New Orleans area, eight transmission lines bringing power to more than 900,000 people fell, despite the “monster storm” causing less damage there compared to south and west Louisiana.
In the meeting, a resolution was approved asking the state’s congressional delegation to seek federal disaster relief that would offset storm-related losses and help fund upgrades to transmit large amounts of electricity from generating plants to customers.
