Barbara Manuel saw a flicker of sun and that gave her hope that the worst of the horrific flooding to hit southern Louisiana was over.
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In one dramatic rescue in Baton Rouge captured on video, rescuers on a boat pulled a woman from a auto that had just slipped under water.
More than 11,000 people were staying in shelters, with a movie studio and a civic center that usually hosts concerts and ballets pressed into service.
In Louisiana, more than 80 percent of the residential construction is wood, with an estimated 5% having basements, and over half of the commercial buildings are steel and concrete, according to AIR.
State Governor John Bel Edwards announced that the federal government had declared a major disaster for the state of Louisiana.
“I fully expect that more parishes will be added to the declaration on a rolling basis”, Edwards said in a statement in which he called the flooding “unprecedented” for his state.
“This is a serious event. This will aggravate the ongoing flooding and may delay water receding”, the NWS said, forecasting the Amite won’t fall below flood level until Wednesday morning. They have also been going out in boats – locally referred to as the “Cajun Navy” – to rescue people, supplementing the efforts of National Guardsmen, state officials and Coast Guardsmen in high-water vehicles, boats and helicopters.
One of those stranded motorists was Alex Cobb of Baton Rouge, who spent Saturday night on the interstate before being rescued by a National Guard truck.
She was on her way to a bridal shower she was supposed to host Saturday when flooding closed off the highway. “We’re talking about places that have literally never flooded before”, said Anthony “Ace” Cox, who started a Facebook group to help collect information about where people were stranded.
In Denham Springs, 19km east of Baton Rouge, coffins unearthed by the rains floated down the streets.
Matthew and Rachel Fitzpatrick, from Brandon, Mississippi, hopped off one of the choppers with her grandparents.
Matthew, 29, said between 250 and 300 people were still at the church as of late afternoon Sunday. She also used her own drone to take aerial images of her neighbourhood inundated with flood waters.
Lt. Davis Madere of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries, who spent days rescuing people and their animals, said the floodwaters are a potential minefield of submerged vehicles, fences and mailboxes that can trip up boats. The woman, who’s not initially visible on camera, yells from inside the auto: “Oh my god, I’m drowning”.
She pleads with Phung to get her dog and appears to try to push him under so he would search again, but he can’t find the dog under the water. After several seconds, Phung takes a deep breath, goes underwater and resurfaces – with the small dog.
The number of Louisiana National Guard rescues this weekend totaled over 3,500 people and 166 pets, the news site reports.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – An act of God is how some are describing it, a catastrophic 48-hour torrent of rain that sent thousands of people in Louisiana scrambling for safety and left many wondering how a region accustomed to hurricanes could get caught off guard so badly.
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– The head of the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency says 56 people remain in a shelter because their homes are flooded.
