The Edwards administration was anxious about cash flow problems even before the storms, because his predecessor and lawmakers heavily drained state treasury reserves to patch together prior year budgets. Rivers in the region reached historic highs – occasionally shattering old records dating to 1983 floods.
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Louisiana Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon said that only 12 percent of the homes in hard-hit Baton Rouge were covered by flood insurance, and only 14 percent in Lafayette.
Then on July 17, a lone gunman shot and killed three law enforcement officers and wounded three others outside a Baton Rouge convenience store.
Obama has not commented on the flooding.
More than 60,000 people had signed up for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and 16 parishes were added to the federal disaster declaration, bringing the total to 20.
Edwards spoke after meeting with FEMA administrator Craig Fugate.
Authorities were checking every flooded home and automobile, not knowing how many people might be missing and how many simply might be unable to communicate.
As the water receded, people donned surgical masks and began the back-breaking job of ripping out soggy carpet, drywall and insulation.
The fifth flood victim in East Baton Rouge Parish was recovered Friday during the height of the rain event.
Images of flooded cemeteries and caskets floating on the water reminded many of that natural disaster. And “we’ve had right at 40,000 individuals register for disaster assistance”.
Across the flood-stricken area, many residents said they weren’t required to have flood insurance and didn’t have it, since nothing remotely like this had ever happened before.
Officials also updated the death toll to eight, but The Advocate in Baton Rouge reports a ninth fatality, citing East Baton Rouge County Coroner William “Beau” Clark. It allows HUD to offer foreclosure relief and other help to certain families in the parishes.
Castro said the disaster declaration gives city and state officials the flexibility to redirect millions of dollars in annual formula funding to address critical needs, including housing and services for disaster victims.
Toney Wade with the Animal Cruelty Task Force tells KATC TV (http://bit.ly/2b6x3hD) the Abbeville shelter got a couple of inches of water inside.
He said the St. Tammany shelter plans to adopt out the dogs.
Yet as floodwater flowed downstream, officials warned that the danger was far from over.
“FEMA is updating all their maps, and so if you lock in your flood rate now in a preferred risk zone, you get to maintain that rate structure for the lifetime of that policy”, said Holehouse. Communities to the south – still in rescue mode – urged residents to stay in their homes or evacuate.
“At least 75 of my deputies no longer have a home”, Ard said. “He knows his people need him”.
Slowly, residents began to return to water-ravaged homes in Baton Rouge on Tuesday after heavy rain submerged large stretches of southern Louisiana, killing 11, damaging entire neighborhoods and prompting tens of thousands of rescues. At least 40,000 Gulf Coast homes have been impacted by the historic flooding. Even more people escaping the flood were at an RV park on the site. His office later increased that figure to more than 30,000.
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The Rho Epsilon chapter of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority at Louisiana State University is raising money to help the students in the Baton Rouge area that have been affected by the floods. Think about that much extra water PAST the flood state with nowhere to go.
