She also said that Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is scheduled to visit the region on Thursday.
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John Bel Edwards said Tuesday at a press conference that 8,000 people are still being housed in shelters and, along with the 20,000 people who have been rescued, more than 1,000 pets have also had to be evacuated.
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. They may have to find new places altogether.
The sheriff of Louisiana’s badly flooded East Baton Rouge Parish says the arrest of 10 people in looting incidents has led to a curfew order.
Thousands are still holed up in shelters or at friends’ houses on high ground, relying on Facebook videos and word-of-mouth for an answer to the question on everyone’s tongues: How bad is the damage? Within an hour, she said, it was up to her chin, and she and her daughter almost had to swim out of the apartment building. “From rock bottom”, she said.
“There are still a lot of people who are suffering”, the governor said.
“We are still very much in an emergency, search-and-rescue response mode for much of the Florida parishes”, Mr. Edwards said, referring to an eight-parish area east of the Mississippi River. A half-built apartment building in one part of the city was now half-submerged. The National Weather Service issued renewed flood warnings. They brought only what they stuffed in their auto – some clothes, books, toys, a computer, iPad, phones and a carton of milk – along with their two dogs, a Chihuahua and a dachshund.
“There’s this thought in my mind, we just need essentials”, Bethany Ash said.
The extent of damage was coming into clearer view.
The last update she got on her house was from a family member who had seen her neighborhood on the news.
“All you could see was rooftops”, she said. That’s leading to a great deal of frustration for those making up the “Cajun Navy” of volunteers trying to help.
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. Key, an insurance adjuster, fled his home as the flood water was rising with his wife and three children and returned today to a.
Ed Martin, 69, tells the Post he was rescued by the National Guard from his home in Prairieville after the water was thigh-high.
He woke up in four inches of water on Sunday. But then the water started rising, fast.
David Ellis is among the homeowners with flood damage but no flood insurance. “Too late now”, he said.
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. “Watched it twice”, he said. “I don’t know if I’m going to be able to open back up or not”. “I’m not God, and I’m not the weatherman”.
They were able to walk to a place where the water hadn’t risen yet, where her daughter had parked her auto.
She’s behind on bills. Nearby lies a pile of stinking debris pulled from the flooded, one-story wood-frame home.
“I’m just lost. I don’t know what to do”, said Guidry, 48, sitting on a folding chair outside a gymnasium converted into an emergency shelter in Ascension Parish.
“I feel so homeless”.
The family made a decision to caravan home, on a 20-mile trip that took longer than two hours. The floors were covered in a thin layer of mud, and a refrigerator lay on its side, tossed by water that had risen to shoulder height, according to the marks left on the walls. In the living room, a U-shaped couch faced a large flat-screen television. Numerous photos were of her 15-year-old daughter, Olivia.
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Lady Gaga says she’s pitching in to help with flood relief efforts in Louisiana.
