MORGAN CITY, La. (AP) — Francine weakened Thursday after striking Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses, sent storm surge rushing into coastal communities and raised flooding fears in New Orleans and beyond.
As heavy rain drenched the northern Gulf Coast, New Orleans awoke to widespread power outages and debris-covered streets. Just before sunrise, large swaths of the city were without power, and home generators roared outside some houses. There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries.
Up to 6 inches of rain was possible in parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Georgia, with up to 10 inches possible in some parts of Alabama and Florida, forecasters said. Flash flooding threatened cities as far away as Jackson, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; and Atlanta.
Francine slammed the Louisiana coast Wednesday evening with 100 mph winds in coastal Terrebonne Parish, battering a fragile coastal region that has not fully recovered from a series of devastating hurricanes in 2020 and 2021. The system then moved at a fast clip toward New Orleans, lashing the city with torrential rain.
In New Orleans, rushing water nearly enveloped a pickup truck in an underpass, trapping the driver inside. A 39-year-old emergency room nurse who lived nearby grabbed a hammer, waded into the waist-high water, smashed the window and pulled the driver out. It was all captured on live television by a WDSU news crew.
“It’s just second nature I guess, being a nurse, you just go in and get it done, right?” Miles Crawford told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Thursday. “I just had to get to get him out of there.”
He said the water was up to the driver’s head and rising. Crawford told the man to move to the back of the truck’s cab, which gave him more room and since the front end of the pickup was angled down, into deeper water.
“I wasn’t really questioning whether I should do it — it was just who is going to get it done,” he recalled, adding that he never caught the man’s name.
News footage from coastal communities showed waves from lakes, rivers and Gulf waters thrashing seawalls. Water poured into city streets in blinding downpours. Oak and cypress trees leaned in the high winds, and some utility poles swayed.
By early Thursday, water was receding in Jefferson Parish, where streets flooded, but canals were still high, parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng said in a social media post. Pumps that operated through the night could not keep up with the storm, causing sewer system problems, she said.
She asked residents to give the parish time to clear the streets, noting that the hazards after a storm can sometimes be more dangerous than the storm itself.
As the sun rose in Morgan City, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from where Francine made landfall, residents gathered tree branches that were strewn across their yards, where water rose almost to their doors. Pamela Miller, 54, stepped outside to survey the damage after a large tree fell on the roof of her home.
“It was a really loud noise, a jolt, and that’s when we realized the tree had come down,” she said. “Luckily it did not go through the roof.”
Jeffrey Beadle, 67, emerged from the hotel room where he sheltered for the night.
Beadle left his home in low-lying Bayou Louis, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) outside town, on Wednesday as the rain picked up. He lived there for 30 years without any major damage, but he was worried this time would be different because his home was right in the hurricane’s path. He loaded his car in preparation to check on his home.
