Homes Flooded as Ike Passes Louisiana
By Michael Kunzelman
Associated Press Writer
September 13, 2008
CBNNews.com - LAKE CHARLES, La. - Southwest Louisiana was spared a direct hit from Hurricane Ike, but a 16-year-old drowned in a storm surge that crawled some 30 miles inland, flooding tens of thousands of homes and making many roads impassable.
Rescue crews launched about 30 boats Saturday to look for stranded residents in coastal Cameron Parish, a day after some 160 people were plucked from the floodwaters near Lake Charles. A nursing home with 116 residents also had to be evacuated and a deputy was injured when his vehicle hit a temporary levee.
Officials had no statewide count of saturated homes, but 13,000 buildings flooded in Terrebonne Parish, 210 miles from Texas, parish officials said.
Despite areas being under water, Gov. Bobby Jindal said some rescuers were facing resistance.
"Believe it or not, we still have people in some of those communities refusing to leave," he said.
The state's first death from the storm was a 16-year-old boy who fell from a fishing boat Saturday in Bayou Dularge, flooded by Ike's storm surge in south Terrebonne Parish, according to the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.
The surge breached levees and soaked areas still recovering from Labor Day's Hurricane Gustav. Officials said the flooding was worse than 2005's Hurricane Rita, which hit the Louisiana-Texas border.
Between Ike and Gustav, about 177,000 homes and businesses around Louisiana were without power, according to the state Public Service Commission.
Ike came ashore in Galveston, Texas, on Saturday morning, with 110 mph winds. But its impact was felt 120 miles away in Lake Charles. Water reached as far as the civic center downtown, some 30 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico.
To the south, about 1,800 homes and business flooded on Friday in coastal Cameron Parish and Jindal said then he expected water to eventually inundate all 2,900 homes.
A spokesman for the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries couldn't say exactly how many people had been rescued Saturday.
"The only reliable figures are at the end of the day, as they're counted as they get off the boat," he said.
In Plaquemines Parish, near New Orleans, storm surge was reportedly creeping toward the huge Conoco Phillips oil refinery in Jesuit Bend.
In Terrebonne Parish, crews were working to plug at least four breaches, but the federal levee system built after Katrina was holding.
Associated Press writers Mary Foster and Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans contributed to this story.
Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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