BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – The Latest on flooding in the Deep South (all times local):
2 p.m.
AT&T Wireless says that severe weather in Louisiana has damaged its equipment and halted service for some customers in the Baton Rouge area.
The company said that one of its switching centers that carries network traffic in the area was flooded, and it is working to restore service as quickly as possible.
AT&T did not have an exact measure of how many people were affected.
The company said it has technicians and other resources staged for additional restoration work as soon as damaged areas are safe to access. The trouble in Louisiana is unrelated to the outage that some customers in the Midwest experienced on Saturday.
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1 p.m.
The Salvation Army in Louisiana is evacuating people from a temporary shelter and their headquarters after floodwaters got into the building in Baton Rouge.
Captain Brett Meredith says the headquarters on Sunday now hold 6 to 7½ feet of water. About 120 people had to be evacuated from there.
Meredith says about 60 people had to be moved from a temporary flood shelter at one of its buildings.
He says there’s no water yet in that facility, where mostly homeless people were sheltering from the floods. But flooded streets mean people can’t get in or out so they had to be evacuated by high-water trucks.
He says those rescued from headquarters included people in the drug and alcohol treatment program, homeless people, and on-site staffers.
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12:35 p.m.
The Ochsner Medical Center in Baton Rouge is evacuating some critically ill patients due to the widespread flooding in the area.
In a statement Sunday, the hospital says about 20 critically ill patients have been transferred from their O’Neal campus facility to other Ochsner facilities. An additional 20 will be transferred shortly as a precautionary measure.
The medical center says they are assessing the impact of the weather and flooding, are monitoring the water levels and in contact with local and state officials.
Floodwaters have swamped parts of the state after drenching rain earlier in the week.
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12:15 p.m.
Louisiana’s governor says cellphone service outages are affecting rescuers’ ability to communicate with residents asking for help – and with each other.
Gov. John Bel Edwards said Sunday that it “does present a problem.”
The governor says an AT&T switching facility in the area had been knocked out by floodwaters.
In a statement the company says they are working to restore affected wireless service as quickly as possible. AT&T says they have technicians and resources ready and as soon as it’s safe in affected areas, they will get to work.
The company is recommending customers text before calling and use wi-fi where it’s available.
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11:45 a.m.
Family members and residents are trying to rescue people affected by floodwaters that have swamped parts of the state.
Wayne Muse has been trying to reach or contact his 86-year-old mother since Saturday night, when she told him by phone that she had two inches of water inside her apartment at a Denham Springs retirement home.
He ran into a police roadblock on Sunday morning in east Baton Rouge, where rapidly rising water is flooding neighborhoods near the juncture of the swollen Amite and Comite rivers.
Baton Rouge resident Jeffrey Yglesias came out to help with his 22-foot boat. He said he has Stage 4 cancer but he felt like he had to help.
Yglesias said he was seeing flooding in places that had never flooded before.
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11:25 a.m.
A government official says that 5,050 people are currently staying in shelters due to the widespread flooding that has struck the state.
The Department of Children & Family Services Secretary Marketa Garner Walters said Sunday that the people have been staying at government and Red Cross shelters.
Gov. John Bel Edwards also said that more people are staying in private shelters like churches.
Walters said the Red Cross is also looking for volunteers.
Wide swathes of the state have been hit by historic levels of flooding.
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11:05 a.m.
Louisiana’s governor says at least 7,000 people have been rescued so far due to widespread flooding in the state.
Gov. John Bel Edwards emphasized Sunday that the rain-caused flooding was “not over.”
He says the fatalities have not risen from the three dead reported on Saturday. One person is unaccounted for in St. Helena Parish.
Edwards says the storm has “subsided in its intensity” but he is encouraging people to not go out and “sightsee” even as the weather gets better.
The governor says water is continuing to rise in some areas even though the sunshine is out.
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9:20 a.m.
In southwest Louisiana, the Mermentau (MER-men-tow) River is expected to rise 3 feet or more above the levees in Lake Arthur, a city of about 2,700. Jefferson Davis Parish Sheriff Ivy Woods is advising residents to pack up and get out before Tuesday.
He says that during the area’s last major flood, in 2013, the river was 8 feet high and at the top of the levee. He says the current prediction is for a crest Monday evening or night at 11 to 12 feet.
Woods says that by midmorning Sunday, about 10 people had called and asked for a ride out because of high water in the streets.
KPLC-TV reports (KPLC http://bit.ly/2bqMZLg) that the mayor of Welsh advised people in low-lying areas along Lacassine (lak-uh-SEEN) Bayou to evacuate.
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9 a.m.
Widespread flooding in Louisiana has stranded motorists for nearly a day on Interstate 12.
Alex Cobb of Baton Rouge says she has been stuck since around 11 a.m. Saturday morning.
Reached by telephone Sunday, she said she was on her way to a bridal shower she was supposed to be hosting on Saturday when flooding closed off the highway.
She said she had food from the bridal shower that she was able to eat and a produce truck about a ¼ mile up the road opened its doors and shared its stock with the stranded motorists.
Cobb said some of the people stranded on the highway were actually fleeing flooding in their homes when they got caught on the freeway.
The mood is surprisingly upbeat but she emphasized that people “want water.”
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8 a.m.
Emergency crews worked through the night to rescue scores of Louisiana residents from homes and stranded cars as floodwaters continued to inundate large swaths of the Baton Rouge region.
Mike Steele of the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness said Sunday morning that there was an overnight spike in flood rescues in eastern Baton Rouge. He said two nursing homes in that area were being evacuated.
Police also were rescuing people from dozens of cars that were stranded on Interstate 12, which was closed from Baton Rouge to Tangipahoa Parish.
Steele says the flooding that started Friday has damaged more than 1,000 homes in East Baton Rouge Parish, more than 1,000 homes in Livingston Parish and hundreds more in St. Helena and Tangipahoa parishes.
At least three deaths have been blamed on the flooding.
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1:49 a.m.
Emergency crews plucked motorists from stranded cars in high water along a stretch of south Louisiana interstate, pulled others from inundated homes and braced for more arduous work Sunday after conducting at least 2,000 rescues.
Pounding rains swamped parts of southeast Louisiana so that whole subdivisions appeared isolated by floodwaters, which are blamed for at least three deaths.
Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency, calling the floods “historic.” He and his family were even forced to leave the Governor’s Mansion when chest-high water filled the basement. He later toured flood-ravaged areas by helicopter and warned Louisiana residents it would be too risky to venture out even once the rains begin to subside.Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
