Gov. John Bel Edwards and his family remain displaced by flooding from the Louisiana Governor’s Mansion, with no return date set, The Associated Press reports.
The governor was asked about the damage Wednesday during his radio call-in show. Edwards and his family were forced to leave the mansion when chest-high water filled the basement and electricity was shut off.
“We’ll be out for a while,” Edwards told listeners.
The Edwards family is staying in a state police facility in East Baton Rouge Parish. The governor says it was the first time the mansion has flooded, adding that it took the worst damage of all the state buildings in the parishes hit by the storm.
But Edwards says his family’s displacement is nothing compared to the struggles of thousands of storm victims across south Louisiana.
Meanwhile, in an interview with Time magazine, Edwards says the state is asking for federal hazard mitigation funds as a way to prevent future flooding. The governor says the funds would be used to “channel floodwaters and keep them out of communities, put them into the Mississippi River and put them other places where they don’t cause the damage that we’ve seen.”
Asked whether he believes the flooding was caused by climate change, Edwards says: “We all have our own sneaking suspicions. I will tell you that if these types of extreme weather events continue to happen with the frequency that we’ve seen recently over the next few years, I think that’s about the only thing that explains it.”
Read Edwards’ full interview with Time, in which he also discusses how the state and federal response to the flooding compares with what was experienced during Hurricane Katrina; how long he expects the recovery to take; and how he feels about police and community relations in the wake of the Alton Sterling shooting in July.
