“We’ve started to roll out some of those projects, certainly not as soon as everybody would like. “I knew when I took office that my administration would need to roll up our sleeves and get to work to address our drainage infrastructure,” Mayor Sharon Weston Broome says. Solving the complex problem of how to improve the manner by which water drains through the parish continues to be one of the biggest issues facing the community. Greater Baton Rouge is its own water world, its mostly flat topography crisscrossed by bayous, canals and channels that take on rainfall and water flowing from the north, sending it on to destinations to the south.īut just like Baton Rouge’s gridlocked roads, its bodies of water are choked with obstructions. The storm was categorized as an anomaly-a one in 1,000-year event in the hardest hit locations-but it foretold the vulnerability of an area awash, quite literally, in bodies of water. Millions of dollars were raised from local and national donors that went to flood victims and area nonprofits. Churches and volunteer groups provided labor and meals. When it was all over, the freakish weather event had uprooted tens of thousands of families, totaled cars and cost homeowners untold sums in repairs.īut it also revealed the area’s tireless generosity. Swollen rivers, creeks and tributaries simply couldn’t hold the continuing rainfall, their banks overtopping and pushing floodwater into scores of homes and businesses. The city of Watson saw more than 31 inches of rain, and Denham Springs was inundated by more than two feet of downpour. Areas to the east of the Capital City saw higher totals. But we’re trying to look forward, not backward.”įive years ago this month, an unnamed, slow-moving storm system camped out over the region for two days, unloading record rainfall, including more than 19 inches in Baton Rouge, according to NOAA. “Those piles represented years of our lives,” Strain says. Friends and family descended on the Strains’ home and removed saturated sheetrock, ruined household items and furniture, piling it all up on the curb to be hauled away. What happened the next day at the Strains’ home, and in hundreds of homes and businesses around town, was the same narrative that had played out thousands of times in August 2016: the long, tedious process of cleaning up. Photo by Collin RichieĪs George Strain watched the water continue to rise and creep into his home, he and his wife, Pat, bagged what they could and got out, walking through thigh-high water until they found the closest high ground their daughter could reach by car. Pat and George Strain in their Morning Glen home, which narrowly escaped flooding in 2016-only to flood this May.
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