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Isaac arrived exactly seven years after Hurricane Katrina and passed slightly to the west of New Orleans, where the city’s fortified levee system easily handled the assault.
The city’s biggest problems seemed to be downed power lines, scattered tree limbs and minor flooding. Just one person was reported killed, compared with 1,800 deaths from Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi. And police reported few problems with looting. Mayor Mitch Landrieu ordered a dusk-to-dawn curfew just to be sure.
But in Plaquemines Parish, a sparsely populated area south of the city that is outside the federal levee system, dozens of people were stranded in flooded coastal areas and had to be rescued. The storm pushed water over an 18-mile levee and put so much pressure on it that authorities planned to intentionally puncture the floodwall to relieve the strain.
“I’m getting text messages from all over asking for help,” said Joshua Brockhaus, an electrician who was rescuing neighbors in his boat. “I’m dropping my dogs off, and I’m going back out there.”
President Barack Obama declared federal emergencies in Louisiana and Mississippi late Wednesday, according to a statement from the White House. The disaster declarations free up federal aid for affected areas.
By midafternoon Wednesday, Isaac had been downgraded to a tropical storm. The Louisiana National Guard wrapped up rescue operations in Plaquemines Parish, saying they felt confident they had gotten everyone out and there were no serious injuries but would stay in the area over the coming days to help, National Guard spokesman Capt. Lance Cagnolatti said.
Isaac’s maximum sustained winds had dropped to 50 mph by early Thursday morning. Even at its strongest, Isaac was far weaker than Hurricane Katrina, which crippled New Orleans in 2005. Because Isaac’s coiled bands of rain and wind were moving at only 5 mph — about the pace of a brisk walk — the threat of storm surges and flooding was expected to last into another day as the immense comma-shaped system crawled across Louisiana.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Isaac would continue to weaken as it moved inland Thursday across Louisiana.
“We didn’t think it was going to be like that,” Brockhaus said. “The storm stayed over the top of us. For Katrina, we got 8 inches of water. Now we have 13 feet.”
In Plaquemines Parish, about two dozen people who defied evacuation orders needed to be rescued. The stranded included two police officers whose car became stuck.
“I think a lot of people were caught with their pants down,” said Jerry Larpenter, sheriff in nearby Terrebonne Parish. “This storm was never predicted right since it entered the Gulf. It was supposed to go to Florida, Panama City, Biloxi, New Orleans. We hope it loses its punch once it comes in all the way.”
The storm knocked out power to as many as 700,000 people, stripped branches off trees and flattened fields of sugar cane so completely that they looked as if a tank had driven over them.
Plaquemines Parish ordered a mandatory evacuation for the west bank of the Mississippi below Belle Chasse because of worries about a storm surge. The order affected about 3,000 people, including a nursing home with 112 residents. In Jefferson Parish, the sheriff ordered a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
West of New Orleans in St. John the Baptist Parish, flooding from Isaac forced 1,500 people to evacuate. And Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office said thousands in the area needed to evacuate. Rising water closed off all main thoroughfares into the parish, and in many areas, water lapped up against houses and left cars stranded.
After wind-driven water spilled over the levee in Plaquemines Parish, state officials said they would cut a hole in it as soon as weather allowed and equipment could be brought to the site.
In coastal Mississippi, officials used small motorboats Wednesday to rescue at least two dozen people from a neighborhood Isaac flooded in Pearlington. In addition, the National Weather Service said there were reports of at least three possible tornados touching down in coastal counties. No injuries were reported.
None of the reports had been confirmed because there was no way for survey teams to assess the area to determine whether damage was done by tornadoes or straight-line winds until the weather cleared, said NWS Meteorologist Shawn O’Neil.
Back in New Orleans, the storm canceled remembrance ceremonies for those killed by Katrina. Since that catastrophe, the city’s levee system has been bolstered by $14 billion in federal repairs and improvements. The bigger, stronger levees were tested for the first time by Hurricane Gustav in 2008.
Army Corps of Engineers spokeswoman Rachel Rodi said the flood-control measures were working “as intended” during Isaac.
“We don’t see any issues with the hurricane system at this point,” she said.
Isaac came ashore late Tuesday as a Category 1 hurricane, with 80 mph winds near the mouth of the Mississippi River. It drove a wall of water nearly 11 feet high inland.
In Vermilion Parish, a 36-year-old man died after falling 18 feet from a tree while helping friends move a vehicle ahead of the storm. Deputies did not know why he climbed the tree.
The storm stalled for several hours before resuming a slow trek inland, and forecasters said that was in keeping with its erratic history. The slow motion over land means Isaac could be a major soaker, dumping up to 20 inches of rain in some areas. But every system is different.
“It’s totally up to the storm,” said Ken Graham, chief meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Slidell, La.
Slashing rain and wind gusts up to 100 mph buffeted New Orleans skyscrapers.
In the French Quarter near Bourbon Street, Jimmy Maiuri was shooting video from outside his second-floor apartment. Maiuri, who fled from Katrina at the last minute, stayed behind this time with no regrets. He was amazed at the storm’s timing.
“It’s definitely not one to take lightly, but it’s not Katrina,” he said. “No one is going to forget Aug. 29, forever. Not here at least.”
As hard wind and heavy rain pelted Melba Leggett-Barnes’ home in the Lower 9th Ward, an area leveled during Katrina, she felt more secure than she did seven years ago.
“I have a hurricane house this time,” said Barnes, who has been living in her newly rebuilt home since 2008. She and her husband, Baxter Barnes, were among the first to get a home through Brad Pitt’s Make It Right program.
Her yellow house with a large porch and iron trellis was taking a beating but holding strong.
“I don’t have power, but I’m all right,” said Barnes, a cafeteria worker for the New Orleans school system.
In Mississippi, some sections of the main highway that runs along the Gulf, U.S. 90, were closed by flooding.
In Pass Christian, a Mississippi coastal community wiped out by hurricanes Camille and Katrina, Mayor Chipper McDermott was optimistic that Isaac would not deal a heavy blow.
“It’s not too bad, but the whole coast is going to be a mess,” he said.
Forecasters expected Isaac to move inland over the next several days, dumping rain on drought-stricken states across the nation’s midsection before finally breaking up over the weekend. The storm was expected to weaken to a tropical depression Thursday, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.
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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Brian Schwaner and Stacy Plaisance in New Orleans; Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge; Kevin McGill in Houma; Holbrook Mohr in Waveland and Pass Christian, Miss.; and Jeff Amy in Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss.
As the rain continued and winds pushed across the Gulf Coast, it remained far too soon to determine the full extent of the damage.
Authorities in Plaquemines Parish believe some people may be trapped but were not sure how many may have remained despite an earlier evacuation order. Rescuers were waiting for the strong winds to die down later in the day before moving out to search.
“We did have two parish police officers that were stuck in a car there. We just found out they were rescued and are safe,” said emergency management spokeswoman Caitlin Campbell. Two other parish workers in a boat rescued them.
Isaac was packing 80 mph winds, making it a Category 1 hurricane. It came ashore at 7:45 p.m. EDT Tuesday near the mouth of the Mississippi River, driving a wall of water nearly 11 feet high and soaking a neck of land that stretches into the Gulf.
The storm stalled for several hours before resuming a slow trek inland, and forecasters said that was in keeping with the its erratic history. The slow motion over land means Isaac could be a major soaker, dumping up to 20 inches of rain in some areas, and every storm is different, said Ken Graham, chief meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in Slidell, La.
“It’s totally up to the storm,” he said.
Isaac’s winds and sheets of rain whipped New Orleans, where forecasters said the city’s skyscrapers could feel gusts up to 100 mph. The weather service said more than 9 inches of rain had fallen in New Orleans in the 24 hours up to 7 a.m.
Power was knocked out to 482,000 customers across southern Louisiana, about 157,000 of them in New Orleans, utility Entergy said.
In Mississippi, the main highway that runs along the Gulf, U.S. 90, was closed in sections by storm surge flooding. At one spot in Biloxi, a foot of water covered the in-town highway for a couple of blocks and it looked like more was coming in. High tide around 9:30 a.m. was likely to bring up more water.
In Pass Christian, a Mississippi coastal community wiped out by hurricanes Camille and Katrina, Mayor Chipper McDermott was optimistic Isaac would not deal a heavy blow.
“It’s not too bad, but the whole coast is going to be a mess,” he said early today.
McDermott stood on the porch of the $6 million municipal complex built after Katrina, with walls of 1-foot-thick concrete to withstand hurricane winds. As he looked out toward the Gulf of Mexico, pieces of a structure that had stood atop the city’s fishing pier washed across the parking lot.
The state transportation department said Mississippi Highway 43 and Mississippi Highway 604, both in Hancock County, were not passable because of storm surge driven inland.
In largely abandoned Plaquemines Parish, Campbell said an 18-mile stretch along the thinly populated east bank was being overtopped by surge. The levee had not broken.
Campbell said officials believe some people may be trapped in their homes by water from the overtopped levee but were not sure how many might still be in the area. Strong wind was hampering efforts of rescuers to get into parts of the area.
She said officials expected the water to recede to the Gulf as wind direction changes with the storm’s movement.
Tens of thousands of people had been told ahead of Isaac to leave low-lying areas of Mississippi and Louisiana, including 700 patients of Louisiana nursing homes. Mississippi shut down the state’s 12 shorefront casinos.
The hurricane promised to lend even more solemnity to commemoration ceremonies today for Katrina’s 1,800 dead in Louisiana and Mississippi, including the tolling of the bells at St. Louis Cathedral overlooking New Orleans’ Jackson Square.
The storm drew intense scrutiny because of its timing __ coinciding with Katrina and the first major speeches of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., already delayed and tempered by the storm.
Isaac promises to test a New Orleans levee system bolstered by $14 billion in federal repairs and improvements after the catastrophic failures during Katrina. But in a city that has already weathered Hurricane Gustav in 2008, many had faith.
“I feel safe,” said Pamela Young, who was riding out the storm in the Lower 9th Ward with her dog Princess in a new, two-story home built to replace the one destroyed by Katrina.
“If the wind isn’t too rough, I can stay right here,” she said, tapping on her wooden living room coffee table. “If the water comes up, I can go upstairs.”
Isaac posed political challenges with echoes of those that followed Katrina, a reminder of how the storm seven years ago became a symbol of government ignorance and ineptitude.
President Barack Obama sought to demonstrate his ability to guide the nation through a natural disaster and Republicans reassured residents they were prepared Tuesday as they formally nominated the former Massachusetts governor as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate.
There was already simmering political fallout from the storm. Louisiana’s Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, who canceled his trip to the convention in Tampa, said the Obama administration’s disaster declaration fell short of the federal help he had requested. Jindal said he wanted a promise from the federal government to be reimbursed for storm preparation costs.
FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said such requests would be addressed after the storm.
Obama promised that Americans will help each other recover, “no matter what this storm brings.”
“When disaster strikes, we’re not Democrats or Republicans first, we are Americans first,” Obama said at a campaign rally at Iowa State University. “We’re one family. We help our neighbors in need.”
Along the Gulf coast east of New Orleans, veterans of past hurricanes made sure to take precautions.
Bonnie Chortler, 54, of Waveland, Miss., lost her home during Hurricane Katrina. After hearing forecasts that Isaac could get stronger and stall, she decided to evacuate to her father’s home in Red Level, Ala.
“A slow storm can cause a lot more havoc, a lot more long-term power outage, ’cause it can knock down just virtually everything if it just hovers forever,” she said.
Those concerns were reinforced by local officials, who imposed curfews in three Mississippi counties.
“This storm is big and it’s tightening up and it sat out there for 12 hours south of us and it’s pushing that wave action in and there’s nowhere for that water to go until it dissipates,” said Harrison County Emergency Operations Director Rupert Lacy.
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Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Brian Schwaner and Cain Burdeau in New Orleans; Kevin McGill in Houma, La.; Holbrook Mohr in Waveland and Pass Christian, Miss.; Jeff Amy in Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss.; Jay Reeves in Gulf Shores, Ala.; Jessica Gresko in Codon, Ala.; and Curt Anderson at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
5:45am — Isaac Approaches New Orleans
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm’s center early today was about 50 miles south-southwest of New Orleans and moving slowly.
Authorities say a storm surge driven by Isaac pushed water over the top of an 18-mile stretch of levee in a thinly populated part of Plaquemines Parish.
The levee is one of many in the low-lying coastal zone. It is not part of New Orleans’ defenses.
Plaquemines officials believe some people may be trapped in their homes by the flood but they are not sure how many might still be in the area. Strong wind was hampering rescue efforts.
