Southwest Louisiana balanced on a knife’s edge early today as Tropical Storm Harvey threatened to inundate the region with potentially disastrous flooding 12 years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall in the state.
Damage was nothing compared to the toll in Texas, but a heavy band of rainfall Monday night proved too much for some Lake Charles neighborhoods, pushing water into houses that local residents said had never flooded.
Across the state in New Orleans, a large cluster of heavy rain was moving in from the Gulf of Mexico as dawn broke this morning, seeming to take aim at the Crescent City.
Lake Charles Fire Department Division Chief Lennie LaFleur says rescuers evacuated hundreds of people from one neighborhood, sometimes through chest-deep water.
“I’ve seen some floods, I’ve seen water come up, but nothing like this,” LaFleur says.
Officials fear more rain.
“Storm surge is going to be a factor,” says Andy Patrick, meteorologist in charge of the National Weather Service office in Lake Charles. “The water is going to be there and it’s going to be hard to drain out.”
Although Louisiana doesn’t appear to be facing a threat on par with Harvey’s catastrophic toll in Texas, images of flood devastation in Houston revived painful memories for survivors of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29, 2005.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu told The Associated Press that a recently repaired pump failed Monday during Harvey’s heavy rains. Landrieu added that most pumps were working, and the city is continuing with efforts to improve the pumping system.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards told reporters that he expects the threat to rise as outer rain bands sweep into Louisiana, adding, “This is going to play out over several days.”
