“As long as my kids are safe, that’s all that matters”, she said.
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Only a few seconds later, he freed the driver and brought her to surface.
Cobb said some of the people stranded were fleeing flooding in their homes when they got caught on the freeway.
“People are surprisingly upbeat”.
“I’m just going to take one day at a time”, said McCrory. “We just want water”.
The initial declaration makes federal aid available in the parishes of East Baton Rouge, Livingston, St Helena and Tangipahoa.
Thousands of people are living in shelters after rising waters forced them to flee their homes in southern Louisiana.
Edwards was himself an evacuee: chest-high waters filled the basement of the Governor’s Mansion and cut off electricity, forcing him and his family to seek shelter elsewhere.
The thousands of rescues include three men in a boat who came up on a woman’s almost submerged auto and struggled to pull her out as the vehicle filled with water.
The woman shouts, “Oh my God, I’m drowning!”
Elsewhere, a rescue caught on video showed three men in a boat pulling a woman out of her submerged auto as it filled with water.
Immediately, she says: “Get my dog!”
Phillips said that flooding could appear later in the week as the water arrives from south of Ascension to St. James Parish.
The governor’s office said on Saturday that more than 1,000 people had been rescued.
Walters said the Red Cross is also looking for volunteers.
Volunteers pull a boat with a woman and young child as they evacuate from their homes Saturday in Baton Rouge..
Adding insult to injury, it started raining in Baton Rouge again Monday and the city could see up to a half-inch of precipitation.
About 20,000 people have been rescued from their homes and more than 10,000 people are in shelters after a slow-moving storm system dumped almost 2 feet of rain.
“It’s coming up fast, man”, said Best, who was wearing little more than shorts and a pair of boat shoes. A rescue team steers their boat toward a red auto that is nearly completely submerged in the green-brown water.
“I have a boxful of pictures in my garage that I hope get saved”.
Yglesias’ home was about two miles from the floodwaters, but the lifelong Baton Rouge resident was seeing flooding in places that had never flooded before.
The heavy rains began Friday, with between six and 10 inches (15 to 25 centimeters) of rain falling on parts of southeast Louisiana, and several more inches on Saturday, the National Weather Service said. Rivers such as the Comite near East Baton Rouge and the Tickfaw near Livingston were expected to keep rising through Monday morning, causing more backwater flooding from rivers and bayous such as the surge that affected Prairieville.
Across southern Louisiana Sunday, residents scrambled to get to safety as rivers and creeks burst their banks, swollen from days of heavy rain that in some areas came close to two feet over a 48-hour period.
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The Tickfaw River, just south of the MS state line in Liverpool, La., was already at the highest level ever recorded, and that was at 9 a.m. Friday.
