Super soaker
Isaac’s flood of trouble
Isaac weakened into a tropical depression yesterday, but the storm that just won’t go away continued to drench the Big Easy and other Gulf Coast areas.
As the former hurricane slowly moved across Louisiana it continued to push more water into neighborhoods around New Orleans.
Hundreds of homes were underwater and half of Louisiana had no power.
About 500 people had to be rescued by boat and highwater vehicles.
Two people were killed in stormrelated accidents — one in Louisiana, the other in Mississippi.
And residents were bracing for more possible damage as water was about to be released from a dam at a lake near the LouisianaMississippi border to relieve the pressure.
But New Orleans was largely spared, thanks to a new levee system built after Hurricane Katrina, which killed some 1,800 people almost exactly seven years ago.
David Newman was frustrated that the feds spent billions of dollars reinforcing levees for New Orleans and Jefferson Parish — and now he’s dealing with the water.
“The water has got to go somewhere,’’ he said.
“It’s got to find the weakest point, and with the wind directions, we were ground zero.’’
Steve Bales, a construction worker in Slidell, said, “We’ve had no power and no food for two days. We don’t have a way out of town. We have nowhere to go.”