Louisiana faces flood risk.
NEW orleans • Tropical Storm Barry continued to slowly rumble across Louisiana on Sunday, bringing waves of rain that forecasters warned could lead to dangerous flash flooding.
The storm has dropped less rain than initially feared and was expected to weaken throughout the day. But as Barry made its plodding, almost leisurely way through the region, the storm still posed a significant threat, with flash flood watches extending across most of Louisiana and into Mississippi and Arkansas.
The National Hurricane Center said Barry could dump up to a foot of rain in some parts of southern and central Louisiana, with 20 inches possible in some areas.
“This rainfall is expected to lead to dangerous, life-threatening flooding,” the centre said Sunday morning.
A day after touching down on the Louisiana coast — becoming the first hurricane of the 2019 Atlantic season — Barry was shifting north, according to the National Hurricane Center. The centre reported Sunday morning that Barry’s centre would “move across the western portion of central and northern Louisiana, and over Arkansas.”
Even as the storm loses power, its slow path north is expected to wreak havoc, with the hurricane centre warning of dangerous storm surges, flooding as water moves inland, and swollen rivers.
The Louisiana National Guard had nearly 3,000 soldiers deployed throughout the state, authorities said. The Louisiana State Police had troopers deployed statewide, “with specific concentrations in the coastal regions,” said Lt. Nick Manale, a spokesman. Manale said work included patrolling roadways and evacuation routes for possible issues, escorting medical personnel coming in from Texas and providing security for evacuees.
Even as forecasts shifted, officials stressed that the possibility of flooding caused by Barry remained a dire threat.
“We are not, in any way, out of the woods,” New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell said at a news conference Saturday afternoon.
A steady rain fell on New Orleans overnight and into Sunday morning, but there were signs that the city was slowly trying to return to normal. Cars were back on the streets and restaurants — which had been operating with skeletal staffs — resumed normal service. Airlines that had cancelled flights in and out of the city began resuming normal operations Sunday morning.
Cantrell reported Sunday morning that the tropical storm and storm surge warnings for her city had been cancelled, though a flash flood watch remained until Sunday night.
Predictions for the heaviest rainfall had shifted west of New Orleans and Baton Rouge, a positive sign for two population centres that have a weary experience with storms and flooding. Both areas were still expected to see continued rainfall and flooding remained a possibility.
Other areas remained on guard. Gov. John Bel Edwards said at a news briefing that the Mississippi River has levees “and doesn’t pose a threat,” but he added, “every other river poses a threat to flooding.”
In Cocodrie, a low-lying coastal village near the bottom of Louisiana’s southern wetlands, Barry’s damage was apparent on Saturday night. Police only allowed residents to check on their properties by walking over the giant earthen levee on foot.
Across a closed, metal floodgate, Cocodrie felt like a ghost town. Barry’s winds and water swept an unusual assortment of items into the highway, which rests on a strip of land bordered by marshy ponds to the west and Bayou Petit Caillou to the east.
Officials in Terrebonne Parish took Barry’s threat seriously, with Sheriff Jerry Larpenter ordering a curfew as the storm approached. By Saturday morning, Coast Guard helicopters had to rescue 13 people trapped by flooding on the Isle de Jean Charles, east of Cocodrie.
With howling winds on Saturday, Buddy Toups, 41, ventured across the levee to check on his Cocodrie property, a fishing camp down the road from his fulltime residence in Houma. Cocodrie has few permanent residents, Toups said, and most everyone he knows left before Barry’s arrival.
“I was expecting two to three feet,” Toups said as he checked his property, “but we ended up with six or seven feet because of the storm surge.” Toups’s property, which is raised 16 feet off the ground, suffered some damage but did not flood.
Like many coastal Louisiana residents, Toups was seemingly unfazed by it all as he assessed the latest round of damage. “This isn’t my first hurricane,” he said.
The Comite River is expected to crest higher than it did during the destructive floods of 2016; the Amite could also be well above flood stage.
In Morgan City on the Atchafalaya River, rain and wind were already downing trees and power lines Saturday, leaving more than 6,000 in the dark, according to David Naquin of the St. Mary Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.