DULAC, La. — Shortly after Hurricane Francine flooded a cemetery in the Louisiana bayou town of Dulac, Lori-Ann Bergeron came to check on the graves of three generations of her family. Their headstones were intact, but nearby caskets had emerged alongside broken crosses and soggy bouquets of flowers.
“It’s like this almost every time the water rises, but this is the only place for them,” said Bergeron, 51, who recalled Thursday her sister’s coffin being dug up when Hurricane Rita ravaged the region in 2005.
“It was hard trying to bury someone twice,” she said.
From cemeteries to homes to businesses and parks, Gulf Coast residents, many still reeling from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Ida three years ago, were cleaning up the mess left by Francine, which struck Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane on Wednesday.
The storm knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of utility customers, sent a surge of water through coastal communities and caused flash flooding.
“The human spirit is defined by its resilience, and resilience is what defines Louisiana,” Gov. Jeff Landry said at a news conference. “There are certainly times and situations that test us, but that’s also when we in this state are at our best.”
No deaths or injuries were reported, he said.
The storm, which drew its energy from the extremely warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, has flooded much of the South, including parts of Arkansas and Florida. Forecasters expected Francine to weaken Friday as it moved across northern Arkansas, but the storm’s slow progress will bring days of heavy rain to the Southeast, creating a risk of flash flooding. Parts of Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia are at slight risk of excessive rainfall, while northern and central Alabama face a moderate risk.
Heavy rain is expected through the weekend in parts of the South and Southeast, which could cause further flooding. An additional 3 to 6 inches (and about 8 inches in some places) is expected in parts of central and northern Alabama through Sunday. Northeast Mississippi, western Tennessee, western Georgia and the Florida Panhandle are expected to get an additional 2 to 4 inches.
Francine slammed into the Louisiana coast Wednesday night with 100 mph (155 kph) winds in coastal Terrebonne Parish, battering a fragile coastal region that has not fully recovered from a series of devastating hurricanes in 2020 and 2021. The system then pummeled New Orleans with torrential rains — leaving behind widespread power outages and debris-strewn streets.
Torrential waters nearly enveloped a pickup truck in a New Orleans underpass, trapping the driver inside. A 39-year-old emergency room nurse who lived nearby waded through waist-deep water with a hammer, smashed the window and pulled the driver out. The rescue was captured live on WDSU.
“It’s second nature, I guess, as a nurse, you go out there and you do the job, right?” Miles Crawford told The Associated Press on Thursday. “I had to get him out of there.”
The water was up to the driver’s head and rising, he said.
News footage broadcast in coastal communities showed waves from lakes, rivers and Gulf waters crashing over levees. Water poured into city streets in blinding rain. Oaks and cypress trees leaned in the strong winds, and some power poles swayed.
At the height of the storm, 450,000 people in Louisiana were without power, according to the Public Utilities Commission. Most of the outages were related to falling debris, not structural damage. At one point, about 500 people were in emergency shelters, authorities said.
“The amount of money invested in resiliency has really made a difference, from power outages to the number of homes saved,” said Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who attended the governor’s news conference.
In the coastal community of Cocodrie in southern Louisiana, where many families own seasonal homes along the bayou for fishing, police were monitoring a road to prevent looting while people cleaned up their properties.
Brooks Pellegrin, 50, and his family cleared out their camp, a two-story structure with a large dock on a canal about 14 miles (22 kilometers) from the Gulf of Mexico. They worked through Thursday afternoon to rake marsh grass and water muddy soil after a 10-foot (3-meter) storm surge washed away the building’s back wall, porch and much of the boat deck.
“We planned everything so we wouldn’t have to do that. This one brought a lot more water than Ida,” Pellegrin said. “It was much more powerful than I expected.”
For many people in the region bordered by bayous, swamps, lakes and the Gulf of Mexico, the threats of flooding and hurricanes have become a way of life, Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre said.
Water occupies about a quarter of the area of the parish, which is home to about 97,000 people south of New Orleans. In 2021, Ida made landfall on the southern tip of the parish as a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph (241 km/h).
This storm was “cataclysmic” and “the most significant hurricane” to hit the region. After the 2021 storm, 90% of the homes in the region had to be replaced and many homes were damaged beyond repair, Webre said.
Over the years, the area has become more storm-resistant, improving drainage and pumping stations and replacing roofs that can better withstand hurricane-force winds. Residents also evacuate more quickly when a major storm threatens, Webre said.
“This population is very resilient. It’s very independent. It’s very pioneering,” he said.
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