BATON ROUGE - Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy and Congressman Garret Graves landed in Baton Rouge Monday afternoon after taking a look at Hurricane Ida during a flyover in a U.S. Coast Guard airplane.

"This was the most powerful storm to hit the United States," Graves said.

Coast Guard Vice Admiral Steven Poulin, an experienced disaster responder, who was also on the flight, could not believe what he saw.

"I will tell you, many communities simply devastated. It was catastrophic."

Ida came onshore in the Grand Isle area, leaving devastation in its wake, which Congressman Graves had never seen before.

"I've seen that island for every Hurricane since Katrina. This is the worst that I've seen it." Graves said.

In LaPlace and Lafitte, Ida's impact was still being felt long after the storm left the state.

"We have water actually going up, not down, in some communities. We continue to have folks who are standed. There are search and rescue missions going on," Graves said.

Senator Cassidy says with Louisiana being a major oil and gas producer, the hurricane will impact the entire nation.

"There's going to be a problem with gasoline supply because it is the Louisiana coast that supplies the rest of the country. I think you are going to see an impact in terms of higher fuel cost," Cassidy said.

The elected officials also say it could be a year or longer before the state fully recovers from the category four hurricane.