LAPLACE, La.—Residents waited for four hours in a half-mile-long line at the one working gas station. Many were out of patience. A fight broke out in the line to pay.

“We’re angry,” said 20-year-old Kylie Jordan as she waited. Ms. Jordan, who has lived in town most of her life, swam through 8 feet of water to get to her car after Hurricane Ida passed.

“We had to make our own way out. No Army trucks came and got us,” she said. “We were on our own. So we stick together and do what we got to do.”

LaPlace, a town of 29,000 people tucked between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, is among the places hit hardest by Hurricane Ida. While the New Orleans metro area was insulated by a $14.5 billion storm risk-reduction system of levees and water pumps, smaller, nearby towns had no such protections. A $760 million levee against Lake Pontchartrain is under construction and should offer more protection for the areas on the West shore in the future.

Residents said they feel alone, left to fend for themselves. They are without power, without cellphone service, and what food there was is spoiling. Water started coming out of the faucets on Wednesday, and people were advised to boil it.

Melissa Fritts, a 27-year-old restaurant worker and a friend of Ms. Jordan, who came with her to the gas station, has three children, ages 5, 8 and 9.

“I’m scared we ain’t going to have enough water. I’m worried about my kids eating. He’s hungry now,” she said, gesturing to the 5-year-old boy clinging to her waist. “If we don’t get power soon, there’s going to be people dying from the heat.”

A long line for gas in LaPlace Tuesday.

Photo: tannen maury/EPA/Shutterstock

Ida made landfall Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane near Port Fourchon, La., south of New Orleans, with winds topping 150 miles an hour. Residents of St. John the Baptist Parish, where LaPlace is located, were under a voluntary evacuation ahead of the storm, said Thomas Malik, a second-term parish council member.

Law-enforcement officials and volunteers helped evacuate roughly 800 people from the area by boat and helicopter during and after the storm, as floodwaters rose up to 10 feet, said Jaclyn Hotard, president of St. John the Baptist Parish. LaPlace accounted for 80% of rescues statewide, Gov. John Bel Edwards said when he toured the area with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Red Cross Tuesday.

Many streets in town were still flooded days after Hurricane Ida passed. Many houses are uninhabitable, if they are still standing at all.

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Infrastructure damages are still being assessed in LaPlace, and there isn’t a timeline for getting power restored for much of the parish. It could be out for longer than 30 days, Ms. Hotard said.

Phones rang continuously at unmanned desks as harried officials went in and out of closed-door meetings Tuesday at the St. John Parish Emergency Operations Center attached to the Sheriff’s Office.

For residents who rode out and survived Hurricane Ida, their struggles continue as they now endure a punishing heat wave as power remains out in a broad portion of Louisiana. Photo: John Locher/Associated Press The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition

Ms. Hotard, seated in the lobby, held a legal pad on her lap with a scribbled list labeled “priorities.” The concern right now is food and water, she said, pointing to her notes. She added housing and electricity.

People pick up ice in New Orleans Wednesday as temperatures rose and many remained without electricity.

Photo: Eric Gay/Associated Press

Ms. Hotard said she hadn’t showered in days and barely slept. “I’m exhausted,” she said. While she wanted to reassure residents that help was on its way, “it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” she said.

The hurricane wasn’t supposed to be this bad here, said Mr. Malik, a 58-year-old native of the town.

Mr. Malik said the National Guard and other groups had been supporting operations and setting up communications since the storm, but they aren’t yet assisting residents directly with basic needs. He said he thought FEMA operation centers and a number of nonprofits’ distribution centers would become operational in the area later Wednesday.

“Red Cross is mobilizing. They’re going to set up 60 feeding trucks,” Ms. Hotard said. “FEMA will begin going into neighborhoods.”

LaPlace is among the places hardest hit by Ida, which made landfall in Louisiana Sunday.

Photo: Gerald Herbert/Associated Press

The parish is having trouble communicating with residents about the availability of these distribution sites as they go up, said Mike Steele, communications director for the governor’s office of homeland security and emergency preparedness. More will open in the next few days with state support, and people can get food, water and tarps, he said.

Mr. Malik toured his neighborhood, pointing to what he described as “the worst destruction we’ve ever seen.” Houses smashed by trees and debris, power poles toppled, whole streets flooded, fence posts strewn like toothpicks and cars overturned on their sides.

While Mr. Malik’s own home only had minimal water intrusion, he said his lifelong friends “have lost everything.” His buddy Ron Tyler, also born in town, evacuated before the storm to a Motel 6 in Beaumont, Texas, and now doesn’t have a house to come back to.

“I’ve never been through something like this in my life,” said Mr. Tyler, a 51-year-old contractor. “Katrina came, but it was nothing like this. We didn’t lose nothing. I went through Isaac, and we didn’t lose anything through that. This time, I lost my house. It’s just gone.”

Mr. Tyler lives in bordering St. Charles Parish, about 10 miles away, which also wasn’t under a mandatory evacuation order before the storm. Mr. Tyler couldn’t convince his wife and kids to leave with him. While they had taken shelter with extended family and were uninjured in the storm, Mr. Tyler doesn’t know when he will be able to reunite with them: he can’t get back, and they can’t get out.

“I only have whatever I brought with me, just a couple pairs of shorts, underwear and T-shirts,” Mr. Tyler said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

The back addition to David Eshleman’s house was destroyed during Ida.

Photo: Rachel Wolfe/The Wall Street Journal

A few blocks away, David Eshleman, a 59-year-old electrical engineer, was in his driveway watering down tanks of gas to try to stretch his supply. The back addition to his house, which borders a golf course, was completely crushed by a pine tree. “If you look at the death count, we’ve done great. But if you look at the material—what has happened here is it’s devastating, unprecedented,” Mr. Eshleman said. “You file a claim, you try to keep everything as is for the insurance adjuster, and then you wait.”

At a nearby house partially hidden behind a huge tree that had toppled onto the roof, 30-year-old airport worker Jamond LaGrand was worried about his mother, who is still on oxygen following a protracted hospital stay after contracting Covid-19 in March. While they have backup bottles for now, he doesn’t know when they will be able to get more.

Mary Thompson and Cody Tullos soon pulled up to the house, offering hugs and bottles of water. Ms. Thompson, a 28-year-old restaurant worker, had spent the day picking up people stuck on the side of the road and siphoning gas from her car into those of her friends and neighbors.

“Right now we’re all kind of teaming up with people we know, making sure people have food,” Ms. Thompson said. “I mean shoot, we got people who don’t even get along and we stayed in the same house, we’re all helping each other eat.”

Write to Rachel Wolfe at rachel.wolfe@wsj.com