Page 46 - Interstate 10 News Today

It kind of depends on where you are. for example, we spent the day in laplace and that is st. john the baptist parish. there were 800 people were told by parish officials there that were rescued out of neighborhoods. and officials there now say that into the evening hours, its going into more of a recovery mode. kind of depends on what -- where you are in terms of just how much access crews were able to get to various neighborhoods. you know, i think the further south you are, its become much --...

And this far inland, really the amount of rooftop structural damage that weve seen in various communities, it really stands out in this storm. >> and are search and rescue efforts going on throughout the night? >> its hard to say, and i think it kind of depends on where you are. for example, we spent the day in laplace, and that is st. john the baptist parish. there are 800 people were told by parish officials there that were rescued out of neighborhoods. officials there say that into the evenin...

Interstate 10 just west of new orleans. and what weve heard repeatedly from residents here is look, were used to flood waters coming in storms like this, but what was very different and terrifying about this storm last night was the intensity of the winds. usually when hurricanes approach this area of louisiana, the storms have died down enough where the winds are manageable. but this is a situation where hurricane ida maintained strong hurricane force winds. maybe a two or a three by the time i...

Mouth is describing what they endured overnight as horrible. and the rescue and search efforts continue here this afternoon in la place, louisiana, a small town just west of new orleans along interstate 10. you have local law enforcement crews about to launch a tank-like high water vehicle into these subdivisions. and were along the highway. theres water on both sides of where were at. and here you can see people starting to emerge out. there are some places that are shallow enough where people ...

Around, if you will, when it got inland to about homa and started moving forward as fast as it had been but it hasnt gotten to i-10 yet. we know for example that the northshore area is going to get pounded a little later, north of lake pontchartrain up through livingston to st. tammany parish and the rain and wind is going to be huge and could be those 20, 24 inches that were advertised in those areas. the heaviest rainfall is along the track off to the east but i will tell you, nobody is out of...

Make it for the first 72 hours if at all possible just to make sure that they can do that while we engage in our search and rescue and of course, were very optimistic that nobody is going to have to wait 72 hours for someone to respond to the call. but we wont know more until the sun comes up. >> youve been warning residents how dire this will be andi its turning out to be the monster you advertised. where do you think louisiana is with this storm? it hit landfall this morning and still packing ...

And get to everyone timely. >> you mentioned st. johns. where is the hardest hit area? where are you concentrating? >> it may not be the hardest hit area but thats the most flooding relatively close to me in baton rouge. so it laplace just south of interstate 10 baton rouge and new orleans and lake pontchartrain. >> any sense of -- i think when people think of obviously new orleans, they think of what they saw during katrina. were awaiting daybreak, they want to know if thats what youre dealing ...

Louisiana. were they under evacuation orders and chose to defy them or didnt they have means or time to get out, were they blindsided? >> reporter: it has been a combination. the only mandatory evacuation orders were those outside the levee system. everyone else had discretion what to do. i can tell you for days there was congestion bordering on parking lot level gridlock on interstate 10. it made it more challenging if you wanted to get out of town to accomplish that. right now, i am on highway...

Entire communities almost wiped off the map. more than a million customers now without power. the outages could last for weeks. and officials fear the death toll will rise. >> theres somebody in there, i think. >> reporter: the massive search and rescue operation ramping up. this woman pulled out of her flooded car. we traveled to hard-hit la mras, just west of new orleans. rescuers in boats and helicopters desperately trying to reach those trapped in flooded homes. where the town had been, now ...

Were getting gusts of tropical storm type winds and thats serious. we have a curfew here in lafayette and its a little extra sensitive in this particular storm because we have so many of our neighbors evacuating new orleans, baton rouge, southeast louisiana on i-10, interstate 10 and highway 90 going north on i-49 and they go through our city. it puts a little extra strain on the first responders. this tropical storm gust winds and heavy winds can come out of nowhere and doesnt take much to knoc...