As residents awaited Hurricane Francine’s impact in New Orleans on Wednesday, it was so quiet at times the only sound was raindrops falling.
In flood-prone areas, water started to fill streets and potholes in the afternoon, though the rain tapered off at around 2:30, giving residents hope that the drainage system would have at least a little time to catch up.
Traffic on the streets was sparse. The few people who were out were making final trips to grocery stores — Tuesday was the day for getting trunkfuls of supplies, so Wednesday was for smaller items like a packet of cat treats or a pint of butter pecan ice cream. Others were going through their storm prep checklist, like pushing trash bins into alleys or underneath raised houses.
Hurricane Francine, a Category 1 storm, was expected to make landfall later on Wednesday. Winds of 74 miles per hour or stronger are blowing off the Louisiana coast, forecasters with the National Hurricane Center said.
People walking or driving through the city said they had two main concerns: power outages and flooding. Both have hit the city hard after previous storms. After Hurricane Ida in 2021, nearly the entire city lacked power for more than a week.
Desaray Mitchell, 49, said that she felt a certain foreboding as Francine approached the Gulf Coast. Walking with an umbrella not far from the French Quarter, she said that she predicted a longer power outage and more flooding than expected.
“I spent two nights in a roof after Katrina,” she said, referring to the devastating hurricane in 2005. “So I feel it in my bones. This could be worse than we think.”
Together Louisiana, a local nonprofit, said that 10 “community lighthouses” — a network of churches and community centers, established after Hurricane Ida, that offer charging stations, food, air-conditioning and other resources during outages — were ready to be opened.
Flooding is no less a concern. Since New Orleans is in the shape of a bowl, it relies on a huge pumping system that essentially functions with giant drinking straws, pumping the water up out of the city and releasing it into canals that take the water into Lake Pontchartrain. But those pumps and the turbines that power them are archaic and often fail and need repairs.
The Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans announced earlier this week that 90 of its 99 drainage pumps were operational. The overall drainage system is said to be able to handle one inch of rainfall in the first hour and a half inch each subsequent hour.
In places where the pumps are inoperable, water can rise quickly, leading to flooded cars and homes. Also, some blocks and areas are simply more prone to flood, in part because some blocks dip lower than others.
Those blocks are evident before a storm, because residents usually park cars onto higher ground, including the grassy medians separating two-way traffic, which are known locally as “neutral grounds.”
That practice is allowed by the city during rainstorms and hurricanes. Earlier on Wednesday, vehicles were starting to line up in the sections where street flooding was expected.
St. Bernard Avenue in the Seventh Ward was one of those areas. But Lamar Clark, 29, had other concerns as he stood on his stoop in the neighborhood. He was running out of cigarettes, which would require a three-block walk to the Triangle Deli. And he was keeping an eye on his backyard chickens, Heckle and Jeckle. He hoped that they had enough sense to stay in their coop — and that their enclosure, raised four feet off the ground, was safe.
“Right now, I’m just worried about my chickens — and if I have enough cigarettes to last through the storm,” he said.
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