Louisiana governor flies over flood zone

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards talks with Jessica Venable (left) and Nicole Sylvester during his tour of damaged neighborhoods Thursday.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards talks with Jessica Venable (left) and Nicole Sylvester during his tour of damaged neighborhoods Thursday.

LAKE ARTHUR, La. -- Gov. John Bel Edwards flew Thursday in a helicopter over south Louisiana, surveying flood damage and then talking with people in a city that flooded, and in one where a heroic effort by volunteers and others held floodwaters back.

At a subdivision in Youngsville, near Lafayette, every third or fourth house had a pile of flood debris on the lawn, a sign that occupants were still gutting and clearing damage. At other houses, remnants showed where similar piles had been hauled away.

"You know I pay my taxes, I worked ... I've never been late a day of my life," said Kimberly Moore, who went up to the governor as he walked along the street. But now, she said, she cannot get the help she needs.

Edwards said afterward that, like thousands of people whose homes flooded this month across 20 parishes, people in Youngsville were in areas that had never flooded before, and they didn't have to buy flood insurance.

[VIDEOS: Click here for videos of the flooding in Louisiana]

"The insurance was designed to make you whole after you've suffered damages," he said, but help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot do that.

"Though we are bringing to bear all the FEMA relief we can and what's allowed by statute, it's not going to be enough to make people whole, and that's unfortunate," he said.

He said he will ask Congress for more money to help the recovery.

A proposal that might help flooded Louisiana homeowners is being drafted, U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro said.

While visiting flood-destroyed public-housing units for elderly and disabled people in Denham Springs, outside Baton Rouge, Castro was asked about allocations like those approved after Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.

"We are certainly ready, willing and able to support that if and when Congress decides to take that up," he said. "I know HUD has already provided some technical assistance in the drafting of that kind of legislation, but I cannot make any commitment on that right now because that is Congress' call."

In Lake Arthur, residents told Edwards about a heroic effort by hundreds of volunteers and others that started during downpours Aug. 13 and kept the Mermentau River from inundating the southwest Louisiana city of 2,700.

People arrived from all around southwest Louisiana to help, Monica Chapman said after speaking with the governor.

"They had kids -- high school kids, they had young kids, they had old people, medium-age people," she said. "In the rain and everything they were still here. It was the most impressive thing I've ever seen."

The sandbag wall had to be reinforced with a plywood wall. And other volunteers monitored the area 24 hours a day to pump out water that seeped through, she said.

Elsewhere in the state, about 2,500 people remained in shelters Thursday, down from the peak of more than 11,000. There's no way to know how many thousands more are living in hotels or staying in the spare bedrooms of relatives and friends.

Some of the mobile homes heading to Louisiana as temporary housing were to be in Baton Rouge on Thursday, FEMA spokesman Kurt Pickering said. He didn't know when the first will be set up on blocks and strapped down.

Edwards said Wednesday that people also can get grants of up to $15,000 to quickly get houses with less catastrophic damage livable so people can stay in them while completing repairs.

The manufactured housing units will be available for people who don't live in a designated flood plain to set up in their yards as they repair houses. For those in a flood zone, the mobile homes will have to be set up at trailer parks or other commercial property still being identified.

A Section on 08/26/2016

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