2. The Mississippi River levees are very solid structures. Louisiana does have a healthy fear of that river but not of Lake Pontchatrain.
Looks like the sin industries of Louisiana have taken major beatings. Most of the casinos have been damaged or people have been forced to flee. The ones in Shreveport and Baton Rouge may become victims of the flooding rains (the Red River basin is getting hammered right now with rains...)
News reports out of Lafayette say a gas station in the Jennings area (about 10 miles West of Crowley) had pumps ripped away by the tornado. This was not the eyewall, as this about 30 miles East of Lake Charles (about 60 miles from the Louisiana/Texas border).
There was a tornado warning in this area last night (Vermillion/Acadia parish warning around 11 PM CDT last night).
I believe there are 300,000 Entergy customers out of power from this storm (Rita) in Louisian, as well as another 200,000 that still have not had power restored from Katrina.
There are 80,000 SLEMCO customers in the Lafayette area without power.
Finally, the Cajun Dome (college basketball arena in Lafayette) was damaged and is leaking water. Hopefully the Astro Dome faired better...
Coastal areas South of Louisiana had flooding in sugar cane fields.
Finally, a lock broke loose on the Intracoastal waterway (somewhere in Southern Louisiana) and there is fear of flooding from that...
The Lafayette newspaper and one of the TV stations had differents parts of this information...