Floodwaters leave 3 dead in Louisiana
Helicopters, boats rescue over 2,000 from homes, cars
BATON ROUGE, La. — As the floodwaters swallowed Lyn Gibson’s twostory home, she hacked away on a hole near the roof, desperately trying to get to safety.
She used a saw, a screwdriver and her feet, knocking her way through wood, vinyl and sheet rock.
“I just kept picking and hitting and prying until I could get a hole big enough,” she said. “I would saw for a while. I’d kick at it for a while.”
Eventually, Gibson made it out of her Tangipahoa Parish home with her dogs, and they were all rescued by National Guard soldiers on a boat.
It was one of more than 1,000 rescues after a deluge swamped parts of Louisiana, submerging roads, cars and homes.
At least three people — two men and a women — were killed.
In a dramatic moment, two men on a boat pulled a woman from a car that was almost completely underwater, according to video by WAFB-TV. The woman, who is not initially visible on camera, yells from inside the car: “Oh my God, I’m drowning.”
One of the rescuers, David Phung, jumps into the brown water and pulls the woman to safety. She pleads with Phung to get her dog, but he can’t find it. After several seconds, Phung takes a deep breath, goes underwater and resurfaces with the small dog.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency, calling the floods “unprecedented” and “historic.”
He and his family were forced from the Governor’s Mansion when chest-high water filled the basement and electricity had to be cut off.
“That’s never happened before,” said the governor, whose family relocated to a state police facility in the Baton Rouge area.
Parts of rural Tangipahoa Parish looked like little islands among flooded fields. Farmland was covered and streets descended into impassable pools of water.
Earlier in the day, Edwards said more than 1,000 people had been rescued. That number appeared to at least double by the end of the day, when Livingston Parish Sheriff Jason Ard said 2,000 people in his parish alone had been rescued.
“We haven’t been rescuing people. We’ve been rescuing subdivisions,” he said.
Beginning Friday, 6 to 10 inches of rain fell on parts of Louisiana and several more inches of rain fell Saturday, according to the National Weather Service.
Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant declared a state of emergency for several counties in his state as it also battled the heavy rainfall.
In Baker, just north of Baton Rouge, residents were rescued by boats or waded though waist-deep, snakeinfested water to reach dry ground. Dozens of them awoke Saturday on cots at a makeshift Red Cross shelter only a few blocks from their flooded homes and cars.
John Mitchell, 23, said he swam to safety with his pit bull after police officers in a boat picked up his 20-yearold girlfriend, her 1-year-old daughter and Mitchell’s father.
“This is the worst it’s been, ever,” Mitchell said.
Mitchell fears he lost their trailer home and his car. A bag of clothes was all he had time to save as the water levels rose.
Shanita Angrum, 32, said she called 911 on Friday when she realized floodwaters had trapped her family in their home. A police officer carried her 6-yearold daughter, Khoie, while she and her husband waded behind them for what “felt like forever.”
“Snakes were everywhere,” she said. “The whole time I was just praying for God to make sure me and my family were OK.”
The body of a woman from Amite was recovered Saturday from the Tickfaw River, according to Michael Martin, chief of operations for the St. Helena Sheriff’s Office.
The woman, her husband and the woman’s mother-inlaw were driving on a state highway Friday when their car was swept off the road. The woman’s husband and mother-in-law clung to a tree before they were rescued Saturday, Martin said.
One man died Friday after slipping into a flooded ditch near the city of Zachary, said East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s spokesman Casey Rayborn Hicks.
The body of another man was found in St. Helena Parish, where crews pulled his body from a submerged pickup on Louisiana Highway 10, authorities said.
Numerous rivers in southeast Louisiana and southern Mississippi were overflowing. The governor said some were expected to crest more than 4 feet above previous records.
In a 24-hour period, Baton Rouge had as much as 11 inches of rain. One observer reported more than 17 inches of rainfall in Livingston, according to the National Weather Service.