The first major storm system to strike the United States this hurricane season, Barry had a brief life as a hurricane before being downgraded back to a tropical storm. It inched erratically through the communities west of New Orleans and near Lafayette, a misshapen brute that appeared to have trouble getting organized before staggering into the Louisiana wetlands. Residents braced for life-threatening storm surges, ripping winds and days of potential flooding to a wide swath of the Gulf Coast and areas farther inland.
Maximum sustained wind speeds reached about 75 mph, just above the threshold for a Category 1 hurricane, before weakening as the storm made landfall. But rain, not wind, was what made residents nervous. Barry was expected to bring 10 to 20 inches of rain over southern Louisiana and southwest Mississippi through the weekend, with some areas possibly getting up to 25 inches.
The dangers were evident even before the storm made landfall. The U.S. Coast Guard rescued 13 people by helicopter Saturday from Isle de Jean Charles, a community of about two dozen people outside the area’s flood protection system, said Mart Black, a spokesman for the Terrebonne Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
A voluntary evacuation order had been issued for the island, Black said, but by morning, the only road leading onto the island was covered with water. Four of the 13 people who were rescued were elderly, he said.
Petty Officer Lexie Preston, a spokeswoman for the Coast Guard, said the rescue effort continued through the day as more calls for help came from the island.
In New Orleans, fears that the storm could dump more water on an already-engorged Mississippi River, straining the multibillion-dollar flood protection system put in place since Hurricane Katrina struck 14 summers ago, subsided slightly. The river was predicted to crest at 17.1 feet by Monday. Though flood stage for the city is 17 feet, most of the fortresslike levees and flood walls are at least 20 feet high.
The storm had been expected to make landfall near Morgan City, Louisiana, but ended up hitting closer to Intracoastal City, about 80 miles west. But David Naquin, homeland security director for St. Mary Parish, which includes Morgan City, said that was little consolation for him, as the eastern side of a storm often packs the most wallop.
“It’s actually worse for us,” he said. “It just puts us in the bull’s-eye of all the rain.”
Heavy rains and winds buffeted the city throughout the day, damaging buildings, downing trees and cutting much of the power. But there were no immediate reports of deaths or major injuries.
In New Orleans, officials had advised most residents to shelter in place rather than leave town. A rainstorm earlier in the week caused extensive street flooding, smashing cars and stranding motorists. And while officials at the Army Corps of Engineers said their $20 billion post-Katrina flood protection system would protect the city, faith in the corps remains shallow among many residents who blame the agency for engineering flaws that contributed to the catastrophe in 2005.
Levees overtopped in Terrebonne Parish, west of New Orleans, and in Plaquemines Parish, to the southeast, though officials said that the impacts, as of Saturday afternoon, were limited to flooded roads and highways nearby.
There was also concern that the Louisiana coast was entering a new era of challenges in a changing climate. Although linking any individual weather event to climate change requires extensive scientific analysis, Barry and the trouble it is causing carry the hallmarks of a warming planet’s influence on weather events.
While the Gulf Coast has always had hurricanes, the extreme rain associated with this storm fits into emerging scientific research that suggests that climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of storms with heavy rainfall.
Warming atmosphere can hold more moisture, and dump it out in heavy downpours — a phenomenon seen not just in the case of storms like Barry but also in the record floods across much of the Midwest this year. Those floodwaters have traveled down the Mississippi River and have kept the river at flood stage at many points for the longest period in the history of accurate records.
If the river levees hold, the rain from Barry alone could prove to be one of the most challenging tests of the complex pumping system designed to clear the streets of floodwaters. After Katrina, the Army Corps upgraded pumping stations with elevated backup generators that have their own giant tanks of diesel fuel, enough to get through a long power failure, and safe houses for workers to weather the storms. (Conditions for pumping-station workers during Katrina were, by comparison, nightmarish.)
Gwendolyn Adams, a retired elementary schoolteacher, said she had fled to Mississippi during Hurricane Katrina and returned to find her home in ruins. What worries her now is not the threat of heavy rain flooding streets, she said, but the question of whether the levees will work. Still, she said she was going to stay put in her house in the city’s Lower 9th Ward this weekend.
“I figure it this way,” she said. “If something is for me, it’s going to happen no matter where I am. If I’m supposed to flood, and I’m at the top of a mountain, it’s going to get to me.”
Barry collided with plans throughout the city and the region. New Orleans officials confirmed that federal immigration raids planned for other major cities this weekend would not take place in the area because of the storm. Most flights to and from Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport were canceled. The Rolling Stones pushed a Superdome concert originally scheduled for Sunday back to Monday.
Residents of Baton Rouge, Louisiana’s inland capital city, were also watching carefully — thousands of homes were submerged under water in the area in August 2016 because of extended summer rains.
Bishop Michael Gerard Duca of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge announced online that faithful Catholics who felt that a trip to Sunday services would put them in danger “are dispensed from the obligation to attend Mass.”
“We pray through the intercession of Our Lady of Prompt Succor that all people of the dioceses get through this emergency situation without personal harm or severe damage to property,” he wrote.