Repeated rounds of storms leave behind damage in Louisiana

AccuWeather

Just days after destructive tornadoes, a new line of storms ripped through Louisiana from May 16-17, hitting some of the same areas that were only beginning to recover.

Transcript

00:00 in Louisiana. Residents have been dealing with severe storms and flooding for multiple weeks,

00:05 including that damaging line last night. So that's why we wanted to bring in Mike Steele,

00:10 communications director for the governor's office of Homeland Security and Emergency

00:14 Preparedness. You join us now from Baton Rouge. Mike, how are things looking there? We know

00:19 Louisiana has hundreds of thousands of customers without power. We've seen a lot of heavy rain

00:23 moving on in. What are some of the areas that have been hardest hit? So there's pretty much

00:29 problems kind of across the state, especially in the southern half of the state. These lines came

00:35 through again and it was very similar to what we dealt with earlier this week. You know, there were

00:40 hurricane level winds. There were possible tornadoes touching down in certain areas. Of

00:47 course, you had heavy, heavy rainfall. And we're talking about areas that were just hit a few days

00:52 ago. And we're talking about areas that already received several inches of rain earlier this week.

00:58 So, you know, the ground's already saturated. The water levels are high on many of the waterways.

01:03 The good news is we're kind of getting a break this morning. A lot of times when you're dealing

01:08 with these events with round after round of rainfall, if we can catch a break, that gives us

01:14 just enough time with a lot of our drainage to kind of catch up. So hopefully we'll see that.

01:21 But the message, you know, we want to get out to the public is, you know, these conditions are

01:26 going to exist at least through the evening. And so they need to be prepared. You know,

01:30 if they need to sandbag things around their property, around their homes, you know, take

01:34 those take advantage of the time we have now before this next round closes in.

01:39 And one of the biggest challenges here, let's talk about it. You talked about the flooding

01:44 and the wind. I would imagine the wind and the wind damage has been more challenging than the

01:50 flooding. And is there an area that was hit the hardest? So there were some areas around southwest

01:57 Louisiana, around Lafayette that were hit again earlier this week. Some of those same areas

02:03 received damage again. So if you take a look at that southwest corner of the state,

02:07 kind of up into central Louisiana, you know, they there were a lot of problems.

02:12 Some of those areas don't have a big population. So that's kind of an advantage. But, you know,

02:18 we we're dealing with people that are, you know, they have events planned, you know,

02:22 it may be sporting events this time of year or graduation events this time of year or travel

02:28 this time of year. So you really start to see things impacted. The good news, at least overnight,

02:32 we did receive two reports of injuries, but there were no fatalities reported

02:37 to the state at this point. So, you know, there's some things to be grateful for. But you're talking

02:43 about much of the southern half of the state at least receiving, you know, 40, 50 mile an hour

02:48 winds. And then you saw upwards of 80 miles per hour, 80 mile per hour winds in kind of the New

02:54 Orleans region. And, you know, you're starting to see a lot of trees come down, a lot of power

02:59 lines come down. And when you when you get hit with these events over a short period of time,

03:05 you know, that can add to the problems when the when the next wave rolls through.

03:11 Well, as we continue to track some more heavy rainfall through the weekend, and then even just

03:15 gearing up, of course, Louisiana, no stranger to hurricane season. How are your teams preparing

03:19 in the short term and the long term? Yeah, so this is the time of year we're normally doing

03:24 a lot of training. We have meetings with our local partners kind of making sure all the coordination

03:28 steps are in place. Obviously, this kind of speed things up on that level, because we're dealing

03:35 with a lot of damage assessment information coming in and trying to take a look at what

03:40 support may be needed, whether it be FEMA assistance or SBA loans. A couple of our parishes

03:47 have received SBA loan assistance because of a tornado outbreak a few weeks ago. So we're going

03:54 to be taking a look at all of that assessment information as it comes in. You know, we have,

03:59 I don't think we've fully received the assessments from the storms earlier this week. And now,

04:04 again, some of these same areas are going to be dealing with additional problems. So there's a lot

04:09 to kind of factor in here, but our staff's kind of used to that challenge. A lot of times here,

04:14 you're dealing with more than one event at a time. So I'm sure our guys will be ready for that

04:20 challenge and we'll work through it. Of course. Mike Steele, Communications

04:24 Director for the Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness. Thank you

04:29 you so much again for joining us. You bet. Thank you.

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