As the Leaf River rose north of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, 26-year-old Rebecca Bruce and her fiance grabbed what they could and left the shed where they live. The water was more than 0.6m deep indoors when they left, she said.
“We lost everything,” Bruce said on Saturday. “I’ve got a book bag full of dirty clothes, and I was lucky to get that.”
Bruce was among about 20 people in a Red Cross shelter in the Forrest County Community Center on Saturday, as creeks and rivers continued to rise after torrential rains pounded the deep south. It was one of nine shelters open in Mississippi and 24 in Louisiana.
Downpours — part of a system affecting Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Alabama — submerged roads and cars, washed out bridges and forced residents to flee homes.
At least three people have died in Louisiana. Mississippi officials were still looking for two missing fishermen, but had no reports of injuries or deaths, Mississippi Emergency Management Agency (MEMA) head Lee Smithson said.
A sheriff’s deputy was hospitalized after his patrol car skidded into a ditch on Friday night, but is now recovering at home, Hancock County Chief Deputy Don Bass told the Sun Herald.
MEMA reported major damage to 95 homes, minor damage to 277 others, with reports still coming in from 41 of the state’s 82 counties.
Smithson said Mississippi is dealing with the most widespread flooding since Hurricane Isaac dumped more than 0.6m of rain throughout the state.
However, “it has not been quite as rough a day as we thought it was going to be today. It looks as if the significant rainstorms for the Mississippi Gulf Coast have not materialized,” he added.
Officials had been afraid that as many as 1,000 homes might flood in Forrest County, Mississippi, where the Leaf River was expected to crest yesterday at 9m, but Smithson said the number likely to be affected was looking more like 100 to 150.
About 75 raised fishing camps in Pearl River County, Mississippi, were likely to be surrounded by water, he said.
In Petal, a suburb of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Azri Oatis and two friends were steadily shoveling sand into white bags in hopes they could save his slightly raised auto paint and body shop from the waist-deep water in its parking lot.
It is the first time floods have threatened the shop, he said.
“Reality kind of slapped me in the face. You see it all the time, other places,” he said.
The flooding could be the area’s worst in more than 30 years, with the worst damage to low-lying areas in the southern and western parts of town, Petal Mayor Hal Marx said.
“We’ve tried to tell folks in those areas to get prepared, to get their belongings out,” Marx said on Saturday at the police station.
It is the most widespread non-hurricane flooding the Louisiana National Guard has ever dealt with, guard spokesman Pete Schneider said.
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