BATON ROUGE, La. — Emergency crews continued on Friday to relieve pressure on a rain-weakened earthen dam in Mississippi that the authorities down river in Louisiana fear could fail, possibly flooding thousands of homes in a southeastern Louisiana already battered by Hurricane Isaac.
As the remnants of the hurricane weakened into a tropical depression and moved north into Arkansas, officials in Louisiana found the bodies of a man and woman in Plaquemines Parish inside a flooded house, The Associated Press reported.
While New Orleans breathed a sigh of relief over the $14.5 billion in levee defenses that now ring the city, other parts of the state without such protections were not so lucky. The storm’s surge caused water to rise nine feet on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, flooding towns like Slidell; west of the lake, the waters inundated LaPlace and the surrounding area.
The potential collapse of Percy Quin Dam, on Lake Tangipahoa in Mississippi would be devastating, and Louisiana officials on Thursday ordered the evacuation of tens of thousands of people who live within half a mile of the Tangipahoa River.
Were the dam to burst, all of the village of Tangipahoa (population 1,200) would be underwater, said Michael Jackson, the mayor. Mr. Jackson estimated that 85 percent of the residents had left for shelters in Kentwood or to stay with relatives. The village flooded this time last year because of a bad rainstorm, so people knew their risks.
Tangipahoa Parish stretches down from the Mississippi state line to Lake Pontchartrain, and other than the city of Hammond consists largely of small towns and pastureland. Most of these towns lie just west of the Tangipahoa River. The parish has grown quickly in the years since Hurricane Katrina, as southern Louisianans moved north, but those who have been around a while are used to flooding.
“Folks that live here know better than anyone else, they know where the water went in 1983, they know where the water went in 1990,” Gov. Bobby Jindal said in a briefing at the Tangipahoa emergency operations center in Amite City, La.
A plan to conduct the controlled release of water from the 700-acre lake will take pressure off the dam, but was not expected to substantially raise the level of the river. The release will affect “about 20 homes,” said Christina Stephens, a spokeswoman for Mr. Jindal’s emergency office, but will reduce the threat to the larger population along the river.
To many of those packing up, this was just an unfortunate but inevitable part of living in a floodplain."You see, this is swamp,” said T. J. Ockman, 65, who lives not far from the river. His mobile home sits on stilts up on a hill and he does not think it should flood. Still, he was making trips back and forth between his trailer and his pickup truck, clomping up the stairs in his white shrimp boots, packing up his three dogs and a generator. “I’m no fool,” he said. “I was raised around the bayou. I’ve been through a few storms. I know from water.”
At the east bank community of Braithwaite, floodwaters stood at eight feet in some areas, trapped within the local levees. The water level had dropped from a height of 14 feet, the Army Corps of Engineers estimated. The state drained off several feet, allowing some water to flow back into the Mississippi River through the Caernarvon diversion, a coastal restoration structure that normally sends fresh water and sediment from the Mississippi into the coastal bays and marshes of the Breton Sound.
On Thursday afternoon, work crews cut a notch in the parish-built levee to allow the water to flow out. “We anticipate we will be able to drain up to 70 percent of the water from the inundated area within a 24-hour period,” said Olivia Watkins, a spokeswoman for the state’s coastal protection and restoration authority.
The rest of the water, Ms. Watkins said, will be removed with diesel pumps that had been trucked in.
In Slidell, a city of about 30,000 people on the northeast shore of Lake Pontchartrain, floodwaters from creeks flowing into the area’s bayous inundated Olde Towne, a residential area and tourist destination, and Mayor Freddy Drennan encouraged residents in several neighborhoods to evacuate.
Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, Jay Dardenne, said that workers in state parks in St. Tammany Parish told him “there is more water than we saw in Katrina.”
At a junior high school in Slidell that served as a Red Cross shelter for the parish, the volunteer in charge, Ed Harris, had to go back to his own home to rescue his wife, Jeanie. “I got a text yesterday from her, she was scared. We’d gone through Katrina.” He went to pick her up, his truck pushing through the rising water. Now she was one of the 160 or so evacuees to join him at the shelter. They still did not know what happened to their house.
John Schwartz reported from Baton Rouge, La., and Campbell Robertson from Amite City, La. David Their contributed reporting from Plaquemines Parish, La. and Timothy Williams from New York.
As the remnants of the hurricane weakened into a tropical depression and moved north into Arkansas, officials in Louisiana found the bodies of a man and woman in Plaquemines Parish inside a flooded house, The Associated Press reported.
While New Orleans breathed a sigh of relief over the $14.5 billion in levee defenses that now ring the city, other parts of the state without such protections were not so lucky. The storm’s surge caused water to rise nine feet on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, flooding towns like Slidell; west of the lake, the waters inundated LaPlace and the surrounding area.
The potential collapse of Percy Quin Dam, on Lake Tangipahoa in Mississippi would be devastating, and Louisiana officials on Thursday ordered the evacuation of tens of thousands of people who live within half a mile of the Tangipahoa River.
Were the dam to burst, all of the village of Tangipahoa (population 1,200) would be underwater, said Michael Jackson, the mayor. Mr. Jackson estimated that 85 percent of the residents had left for shelters in Kentwood or to stay with relatives. The village flooded this time last year because of a bad rainstorm, so people knew their risks.
Tangipahoa Parish stretches down from the Mississippi state line to Lake Pontchartrain, and other than the city of Hammond consists largely of small towns and pastureland. Most of these towns lie just west of the Tangipahoa River. The parish has grown quickly in the years since Hurricane Katrina, as southern Louisianans moved north, but those who have been around a while are used to flooding.
“Folks that live here know better than anyone else, they know where the water went in 1983, they know where the water went in 1990,” Gov. Bobby Jindal said in a briefing at the Tangipahoa emergency operations center in Amite City, La.
A plan to conduct the controlled release of water from the 700-acre lake will take pressure off the dam, but was not expected to substantially raise the level of the river. The release will affect “about 20 homes,” said Christina Stephens, a spokeswoman for Mr. Jindal’s emergency office, but will reduce the threat to the larger population along the river.
To many of those packing up, this was just an unfortunate but inevitable part of living in a floodplain."You see, this is swamp,” said T. J. Ockman, 65, who lives not far from the river. His mobile home sits on stilts up on a hill and he does not think it should flood. Still, he was making trips back and forth between his trailer and his pickup truck, clomping up the stairs in his white shrimp boots, packing up his three dogs and a generator. “I’m no fool,” he said. “I was raised around the bayou. I’ve been through a few storms. I know from water.”
At the east bank community of Braithwaite, floodwaters stood at eight feet in some areas, trapped within the local levees. The water level had dropped from a height of 14 feet, the Army Corps of Engineers estimated. The state drained off several feet, allowing some water to flow back into the Mississippi River through the Caernarvon diversion, a coastal restoration structure that normally sends fresh water and sediment from the Mississippi into the coastal bays and marshes of the Breton Sound.
On Thursday afternoon, work crews cut a notch in the parish-built levee to allow the water to flow out. “We anticipate we will be able to drain up to 70 percent of the water from the inundated area within a 24-hour period,” said Olivia Watkins, a spokeswoman for the state’s coastal protection and restoration authority.
The rest of the water, Ms. Watkins said, will be removed with diesel pumps that had been trucked in.
In Slidell, a city of about 30,000 people on the northeast shore of Lake Pontchartrain, floodwaters from creeks flowing into the area’s bayous inundated Olde Towne, a residential area and tourist destination, and Mayor Freddy Drennan encouraged residents in several neighborhoods to evacuate.
Louisiana’s lieutenant governor, Jay Dardenne, said that workers in state parks in St. Tammany Parish told him “there is more water than we saw in Katrina.”
At a junior high school in Slidell that served as a Red Cross shelter for the parish, the volunteer in charge, Ed Harris, had to go back to his own home to rescue his wife, Jeanie. “I got a text yesterday from her, she was scared. We’d gone through Katrina.” He went to pick her up, his truck pushing through the rising water. Now she was one of the 160 or so evacuees to join him at the shelter. They still did not know what happened to their house.
John Schwartz reported from Baton Rouge, La., and Campbell Robertson from Amite City, La. David Their contributed reporting from Plaquemines Parish, La. and Timothy Williams from New York.