“I’m just lost. I don’t know what to do”, Guidry said while at an emergency shelter in Ascension Parish.
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Chris Bankston was with workers mucking out his family-owned auto parts store Wednesday.
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The extent of damage was coming into clearer view.
Raymond Lieteau, 48, returned to his home in the Woodlands neighborhood of Baton Rouge to survey the damage Tuesday and begin cleaning up.
In some water-ravaged areas, houses flooded to rooflines, and coffins floated away from cemeteries.
Flood waters receded in southern Louisiana on Wednesday (Aug 17), after a days-long deluge that inundated vast areas, claimed 11 lives, and impacted some 40,000 homes.
Brewer and another volunteer, Melvin Porter of Shawnee, left Lawton Tuesday morning to go to Baton Rouge, where they’ll help provide food for flood victims. Countless others didn’t have flood insurance and may not have the means to fix their homes.
Exactly how many will need temporary housing is unclear, but state officials are urging landlords to allow short-term leases and encouraging people to rent out any empty space.
“I don’t know we have a good handle on the number of people who are missing”, the governor said.
Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, assured Louisianans his agency was committed to supporting a full recovery across the state – whether or not the natural disaster was commanding front-page national media attention.
Reports of looting prompted a curfew in Baton Rouge.
Well over 20,000 people have been rescued since Friday, when a slow-moving weather system started dumping water on the Gulf state, and more than 8,000 are staying in shelters – but that number is fluctuating as people arrive and leave the shelters, he said. Residents who lived in low-lying areas near waterways were urged to evacuate Monday night after water breached a 14.5-foot levee along the Amite River.
Smith and her husband are both in their 70s and on fixed incomes.
Officials are going from house to house to make sure all residents were accounted for, as well as search countless cars that were caught in the rising water.
“We’re starting over again”. We say we’ll pray. “At our age that’s kind of rough”.
Through Tuesday, Baton Rouge had received 22.11 inches since the start of August, or more than 19 inches above normal, according to the National Weather Service.
Officials in Livingston Parish have estimated that 75 percent of the homes were a total loss.
In numerous worst-hit parishes, emergency teams began to coordinate door-to-door search and rescue operations, checking and marking homes as well as cars that had washed off the roads.
Damaged products are seen at Jasmine’s Beauty Supply following the floods on August 16, 2016 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. More parishes will be added as officials are able to quantify the devastation, he said. He says his father opened the business close to 70 years ago.
“My furniture is all over the place”, he said. The Brownsfield Fire Department notified the Sheriff’s Office of a vehicle discovered Sunday afternoon in deep water. Floodwaters had never come within 200 yards of the place before, he said. Even more people escaping the flood were at an RV park on the site.
David Ellis is among the homeowners with flood damage but no flood insurance.
Joseph Bruno, a New Orleans lawyer who is a veteran of the Katrina insurance wars, fears the greatest needs could be borne by elderly residents who paid off their homes and weren’t required by their bank to carry flood insurance.
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Among them were John Booth and Austin Tupper of Baton Rouge.
