Isaac damaged 13,000 La. homes

BATON ROUGE, La. — At least 13,000 homes in Louisiana were dam­aged by Hur­ri­cane Isaac, a state emer­gency offi­cial said Tues­day, offer­ing the first glimpse of the reach of the storm that struck a week ago.
A spokes­woman for the Governor’s Office of Home­land Secu­rity and Emer­gency Pre­pared­ness said the pre­lim­i­nary fig­ures were based on an ini­tial assess­ment of com­mu­ni­ties with flood­ing and wind dam­age.
“Our pre­lim­i­nary assess­ments are dri­ven by con­di­tions on the ground, and in some areas flood­ing lim­its where the teams can go. We do expect that this num­ber could rise after FEMA com­pletes house-by-house inspec­tions as res­i­dents reg­is­ter for indi­vid­ual assis­tance,” said Christina Stephens.
If the num­bers of peo­ple who requested FEMA assis­tance offer a guide, the tally of dam­aged homes could end up being much higher.
Nearly 95,000 peo­ple signed up for indi­vid­ual aid from FEMA, for grants to help repair homes and replace storm-wrecked belong­ings, accord­ing to num­bers pro­vided by Gov. Bobby Jindal’s office.
The assis­tance for home­own­ers, renters and busi­nesses was avail­able in the 10 hardest-hit parishes.
Not all of those who reg­is­ter will nec­es­sar­ily be eli­gi­ble for aid.
Isaac came ashore in Louisiana near the mouth of the Mis­sis­sippi River as a Cat­e­gory 1 storm, rel­a­tively weak com­pared to other named storms that remain fresh in res­i­dents’ mem­o­ries.
But its dam­age, par­tic­u­larly flood­ing, was sig­nif­i­cant in Plaque­m­ines and St. John the Bap­tist parishes, inun­dat­ing homes and forc­ing res­i­dents to seek res­cue from rooftops.
The flood­wa­ters were still reced­ing Tues­day, and evac­uees streamed home to assess Isaac’s dev­as­ta­tion and sweep out the muck.
Fewer than 1,600 peo­ple remained in shel­ters around Louisiana, accord­ing to the state Depart­ment of Chil­dren and Fam­ily Ser­vices, down from more than 6,000 at the height of the storm’s flood­ing and res­cues.
The shel­ter pop­u­la­tion dropped nearly in half overnight as roads cleared, more parishes allowed res­i­dents to return and the state bused evac­uees home from state-run shel­ters in north Louisiana.
The state health depart­ment reported that all evac­u­ated nurs­ing homes should have their res­i­dents back by Tues­day.
Mean­while, power had returned to most parishes, as util­ity crews worked to repair lines harmed by trees, wind and water.
The Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion said nearly 38,000 homes and busi­nesses remained with­out elec­tric­ity, about 2 per­cent of cus­tomers, a drop from more than 900,000 out­ages imme­di­ately after the storm slowly wound its way through south­east Louisiana.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Sep 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.