New Orleans area braces for Barry as storm moves closer

“There are three ways that Louisiana can flood: storm surge, high rivers and rain, We’re going to have all three.”

NEW ORLEANS — Thousands of Louisianans broke out sandbags or fled to higher ground Thursday as Tropical Storm Barry threatened to turn into the first hurricane of the season and blow ashore with torrential rains that could pose a severe test of New Orleans’ improved post-Katrina flood defenses.

National Guard troops and rescue crews in high-water vehicles took up positions around the state as Louisiana braced for the arrival of the storm Friday night or Saturday.

Barry could have winds of about 75 mph, just barely over the 74 mph threshold for a hurricane, when it comes ashore, making it a Category 1 storm, forecasters said.

But it is expected to bring more than 18 inches of rain in potentially ruinous downpours that could go on for hours as the storm passes through the metropolitan area of nearly 1.3 million people and pushes slowly inland.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, who declared an emergency earlier in the week as the storm brewed in the Gulf of Mexico, warned that Barry’s winds could form a dangerous combination with the alreadyhigh Mississippi River, which has been swelled by heavy rain and snowmelt upriver this spring.

“There are three ways that Louisiana can flood: storm surge, high rivers and rain,” Edwards said. “We’re going to have all three.”

He said authorities do not expect the Mississippi River to spill over its levees — something that has never happened in New Orleans’ modern history — but cautioned that a change in the storm’s direction or intensity could alter that.

Edwards also asked the Trump administration for a federal declaration of emergency ahead of Barry’s expected landfall.

As of Thursday night, Barry was about 90 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi, with winds around 40 mph. A hurricane warning was posted for a 100-mile stretch of Louisiana coastline just below Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

Southeast of New Orleans, authorities handed out sandbags and people piled into cars with their pets and began clearing out.

Plaquemines Parish, at Louisiana’s lowlying southeastern tip, ordered a mandatory evacuation, and by midafternoon the area of as many as 10,000 people was largely empty.

Justice of the Peace David McGaha waited with his mother, his wife and their 15-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter for a ferry so they could evacuate to his mother’s house in Alabama.

“If the river wasn’t so high, we’d probably stay,” he said. “You have to worry about the water that’ll be pushing against those levees.”

The National Hurricane Center said as much as 20 inches of rain could fall in parts of eastern Louisiana, and the entire region could get as much as 10 inches.

Meteorologist Benjamin Schott said the chief concern is not the wind: “Rainfall and flooding is going to be the No. 1 threat with this storm.”

Hurricane Katrina caused catastrophic flooding in New Orleans in 2005 and was blamed for over 1,800 deaths in Louisiana and other states.