Weakened Lili still packed punch; leaves Louisiana in muck

POINTE AUX CHENES, La. (AP) -- Tropical Storm Lili spun out of Louisiana early Friday, leaving homes and businesses mired in muck and wind-damage debris -- and a half-million people without power overnight.

Lili lost strength Thursday after coming ashore at Marsh Island as a Category 2 hurricane packing 100 mph winds, and officials breathed a collective sigh of relief there were only a handful of injuries and no reported storm-related deaths along the U.S. Gulf Coast,

Before it inexplicably weakened before hitting landfall, Lili packed a terrifying 145-mph wind strength, and was a Category 4 hurricane.

Still, damage was widespread along coastal areas, where ripped-up roofing, felled trees, downed power lines, mud and debris littered a landscape already sodden by Tropical Storm Isidore just one week earlier.

Water from 4 to 8 feet deep swept and swirled across roads and into numerous houses in Pointe Aux Chenes. The driver of a National Guard truck used to rescue residents had no idea where the road was at some points. Guardsmen had to get out and walk through waist-deep water to guide him through.

Many houses in the area were built above ground on pylons or pier foundations that minimized damage, but other homes were hit hard.

"The houses that are on concrete slabs their going to be completely lost," Lt. Jason Coulter said. "It's a mess."

A combination of storm surges and rain caused levees to fail Montegut and Franklin, where flood waters threatened hundreds of homes.

"I'd say right now at least 75 percent of the town got water in it," said Spencer Rhodes, fire chief in Montegut, a town of 4,000 about 40 miles southwest of New Orleans.

Rescue crews in big National Guard trucks evacuated 500 to 600 Montegut residents who had failed to heed calls for evacuation.

"The water just kept piling up and piling up," said Sam LeBouef, as he dragged an aluminum boat down the middle of a flooded street. "It just had to go."

He said his house had never flooded and he had never had reason to evacuate. But this time he had water in his carport up to his knees.

It was even worse in Grand Isle, the vulnerable barrier island community south of New Orleans. "Most of the island is under water," Police Chief Edward Bradberry said.

Further west along the Louisiana coast, rural Vermillion Parish was spared flooding but ravaged by high winds that shattered windows, tipped mobile homes on their sides and knocked out power to all 19,800 homes in the parish, which covers 1,174 square miles.

The entire parish had been under a mandatory evacuation order, and Robert J. LeBlanc, the parish emergency preparedness director, asked that no one return until late Friday so work crews would have time to clear roads of trees and telephone polls.

"And if they do come back they must not expect to have power for a week to 14 days," LeBlanc said.

Gusts as high as 92 mph in New Iberia hurled pieces of metal through the air and blew down a 50-foot-high sign at the Holiday Inn.

In Rayne, West of Lafayette, tin roofing ripped from a lumber warehouse lay across neighboring railroad tracks, curled up like giant potato chips. Nearby, Paul Bott, a 50-year-old oil worker, set up buckets in his bathroom to catch rain water cascading from holes punched through his roof by a fallen tree.

President Bush declared a disaster in Louisiana, making communities that suffered from the storm eligible for federal aid.

By the time Lili arrived, some 900,000 people had been ordered or advised to leave coastal Louisiana and 330,000 in far eastern Texas. Nearly 17,000 of them stayed at 98 emergency shelters.

Col. Jay Mayeaux of the Louisiana National Guard said there was no way to know how many evacuated, as many evacuees likely stayed with relatives, friends or in hotels that were mostly booked along the Interstate 49 corridor from Alexandria to the Arkansas border.

Thousands who took refuge in more northern parts of the state couldn't escape power outages, which affected hundreds of thousands of customers from the coast north through Alexandria.

Some residents in the Lafayette were told they might be without power for five to seven days. One family, not wanting its stock of shrimp to spoil in its thawing freezer, fired up a gas grill and cooked it all, inviting neighbors to indulge in their impromptu Cajun barbecue.

Combined estimates of state and government utilities across the state were at about 500,000 Thursday night; by dawn Friday, the figure was down to 400,000. But it could be a week or two before all got back power.

National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield was at a loss to explain the hurricane's fluctuations in the Gulf Mexico. While the colder waters in the northern Gulf might explain a weakening of the hurricane early Thursday, they do not account for why it had gained strength so dramatically the night before. Earlier this week, Lili killed eight people in the Caribbean.

After Lili passed over southern Louisiana, only three storm related injuries had been reported.

New Orleans experienced minimal damage -- a few snapped trees that led to several-hour power outages. But some low-lying suburban areas, like Slidell on the north shore of Lake Pontchartain, had water in the streets and in a number of homes for the second time since Isidore rumbled through.

The ground was already water laden from Isadore and previous rains so even minumial winds will do a lot of damage to power lines and trees by toppling them. Thankfully the storm came in with reduced wins from its peak or it would or could have been much worse.

May God's blessings be with those impacted.

One family, not wanting its stock of shrimp to spoil in its thawing freezer, fired up a gas grill and cooked it all, inviting neighbors to indulge in their impromptu Cajun barbecue. We were wondering if all the shrimp we had just put in the freezer for the year was going to be ruined. We were ready for a really big shrimp boil if it came to that. Thank goodness it didn't.

"The ground was already water laden from Isadore and previous rains so even minumial winds will do a lot of damage to power lines and trees by toppling them. Thankfully the storm came in with reduced wins from its peak or it would or could have been much worse."

Actually, the fact that Izzy preceded Lili along the same path is one of the reasons she lost her impact. Izzy dumped a ton of cool rain into the Gulf, further contributing to the seasonal cooling of the northern Gulf waters. The cool water is a much less potent fuel than the warmer water to the south, plus a drier air mass also lessened her strength.

This is pretty typical of late-season 'canes, although I cannot remember one that fell apart quite this rapidly. We just had "our Lili" here in Nashville, which consisted of about 3 hours of moderate rain, followed by a breezy clearing. The original forecast had called for torrential downpours all last night and all day today.

While we're all thankful that she wasn't as bad as forecast - let's remember that the forecasters tend to (a) go toward the extremes and (b) get "invested" in their forecasts to the point where they hate to NOT paint and doom-n-gloom. While caution is a good thing, these forecasters could have easily seen this dramatic weaking coming by simply noting the coolness of northern Gulf waters.

That said, our prayers are with those in the path who did indeed incur losses.

Michael

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