good afternoon everyone and thank you for covering this press conference we certainly didn't intend to call it but mother nature doesn't always cooperate as we're well aware by now i do have with me today in addition to general wascum who heads up gosep here dr sean wilson secretary of department of transportation development also butch browning the state fire marshal we've got brigadier general keith waddell adjutant general of national guard and colonel lamar davis who is superintendent of louisiana state police obviously we are having this press conference because of the weather that we've experienced across south louisiana over the last uh 24 hours plus yesterday afternoon i did declare a statewide state of emergency because of the severe weather as you know today we closed state offices in four parishes those being calcu east baton rouge eberville and ascension if there are going to be additional closures tomorrow we'll cert we'll make that announcement later this afternoon as you all may be aware some parts of lake charles received up to 15 inches of rain in localized areas which caused and by the way this fell over just eight to ten hours an extreme amount of rain that caused extensive street flooding and we know that many residences and businesses were flooded as well and for the people in southwest louisiana who've been adversely affected by this weather event our hearts are truly breaking i'm sorry that you are having to deal with this again it was just a couple of weeks ago that president biden was in lake charles to discuss infrastructure and hurricane recovery and here we are with another natural disaster that has set back those recovery efforts and cause damages quite frankly in places that were not damaged by hurricane laura or delta i have been in frequent contact with mayor nick hunter and we continue to coordinate to ensure that all requests for assistance are being met and of course here at go set we're talking to all the parishes around the state uh routinely and that includes calcu parish and the folks there at their emergency operations center i'm doing the same thing here in east baton rouge with mayor sharon western broome [Music] areas from baton rouge to gonzales appear to be the most impacted in southeast louisiana with upwards of 13 inches of rain that caused extensive flooding in that area we know that that flooding extended for a big part of the river parishes as well a lot of folks have been making comparisons already to 2016 especially the august flood and obviously anytime you have severe flooding of this nature that i think there are comparisons to be made this time though we've had breaks in the rain that we didn't have before the water and river levels have been able to recede before the next round would roll in and i think one of the things we're benefiting from this time is that we haven't had a lot of rain up north and so the the rivers and the creeks are able uh to fall a little faster this time and and the the water is not backing up as far uh and it is receding more quickly however if you're one of the people uh with water in your home or water in your automobile uh then that's a little consolation to you so this is a very serious weather event and we are certainly aware of that and unfortunately more rain is on the way we are anticipating additional rainfall tonight and tomorrow morning you know the forecasts are very imprecise and and the first people to tell you that are the folks at the national weather service and the meteorologists but we believe more there will be more rainfall tonight and tomorrow and then there should be a break and then an additional round of storms coming into the area on thursday but the situation remains fluid these forecasts cannot be precise so it is extremely important that everyone pay attention to your local authorities watch the news make sure that you're looking at the national i'm sorry at the weather channel and then if alerts come across for flash flooding whether it's a watch or a warning please make sure that you heed those while we hope that the worst of this rainfall is behind us we can't be sure of that and because the ground is already saturated and the the rivers and creeks are high already it doesn't take as much new rainfall to have a very serious impact with resp with respect to more street flooding and flooding of homes and businesses uh unfortunately there have been some fatalities and they the investigations are not complete but this is what we know uh there was an incident in west baton rouge parish last night and involving a submerged vehicle it appears that one of those individuals is deceased another was injured and yet another is missing and again that investigation continues there there's also been reports that we're working to confirm that a body has been found in a flooded vehicle in baton rouge on blue bonnet boulevard and obviously that investigation continues as well and then there are up to two additional deaths in baton rouge that may be linked to power outages so all together that's four deaths one person injured one person missing and all of that remains under investigation and we do not have a report from a coroner linking any of the deaths to the to the to the flood event but that may be forthcoming so with what i just said that should be a good reminder to everybody to please monitor the situation and then follow all of the guidance that you're giving whether it's from local officials or from other warnings the flash flood warnings and and watches and the worst place you can be in a flash flood is in your vehicle on the street and it is very dangerous and you should certainly never drive through water if you're not 100 sure that it's safe to do so especially at night because the floated flooded roadway is such that you don't know where the road is and where the ditches are and the ditches are always going to be deeper and and uh and this is extremely dangerous and so please stay off the road when these warnings go out unless it is absolutely necessary for you to get out and that should be some some sort of an emergency there are currently 10 weather-related road closures in the state this number is frequently changing and we've had a break thus far today and so the situation is improving most notably on i-10 between segan and highland road here in east baton rouge parish it remains closed in both directions because of flooding although the state police and dotd are working now to see whether they can open two lanes of travel through that stretch but until that gets open they're going to be diverting traffic onto us 61 airline highway please visit 511la.org for real-time information on road closures and road conditions that's the best place to go that's 511la.org it'll tell you exactly which roads are closed which ones are open and when there's a change in the status of of a particular road that'll be reflected there as well there have been a number of search and rescue missions that have been undertaken in the last 24 hours and i have the numbers from the state agencies there are many more than this that have been performed locally primarily in the lake trawls and in the baton rouge areas but i can tell you that in lake charles the wildlife and fisheries rescued 110 people and 15 pets in lake charles the state fire marshal's office rescued 78 people and five pets and they rescued an additional eight individuals in baton rouge and in lake charles the louisiana national guard rescued 19 people and two pets when it comes to shelters we're encouraging everyone to pay attention to your parish office of emergency preparedness they will be making announcements we don't have any state-run shelters and there were only two shelters in operation earlier today one at trinity baptist church in lake charles and as of about noon today i think there were 120 or so individuals there that that shelter was depopulating we'll see what the situation is later today and then here in baton rouge the mayor set up shelter at the airport for individuals and there were about 30 individuals there but as far as sheltering operations those are all going to be locally run and so we encourage people to make sure that you're following the guidance of your local officials as of noon today the public service commission reported 10 430 outages and that was down from 25 000 outages at 6 00 am so power restoration is happening relatively quickly if you are without power however and you plan on using a generator please make sure that you do so safely i'll remind you that we had a number of fatalities after the hurricanes last year when individuals used generators they did so too close to their home or maybe under their home in a crawl space or in the garage or under a vent or a window please make sure that you don't do those things and get the generate at least 25 feet from your house in a well ventilated area and then if you're going to change the fuel or refill it make sure that it cools off completely before you do that finally with hurricane season approaching and beginning in just a couple of weeks on june 1st it is a reminder to everyone to please get a game plan you can go to getagameplan.org you will see that number one on the list is to get your copic vaccine that's part of getting a game plan so that if you have to leave uh and be sheltered uh either in a congregant sheltering a non-congregate sheltering or move in with a relative or a friend or anything like that that it's safe for all of you to do that so please go to get a gameplan.org let's make sure that everyone gets vaccinated and and that's the best way to start hurricane season speaking of covid today we did report 494 new covid cases and there are currently 299 individuals in the hospital across the state of louisiana and very sadly we are reporting 11 additional deaths over the last 24 hours as of today we are at 10 500 even in the number of people who've died from covet 19 since the start of the pandemic here in louisiana and i know that people don't necessarily want to think about covet or vaccinations when your house is being flooded or you're worried that more rain is coming and so forth but it is extremely important that we do that 29.5 percent of our population is fully vaccinated and and that's a decent number that's a lot of shots but that means that 70 percent are not fully vaccinated and so that means we have a lot of work to do if you need to get information about where to get vaccinated in louisiana visit covidvacine.la.gov or you can call 1-855-453-074 again please continue to monitor your local news and follow the advice of local officials uh not sure yet when the next press conference will be i know we're scheduled to have one on thursday that was the regularly scheduled press conference you see these individuals that are called out here today so if you have a question that you want to direct to one of them uh you may do so at that at this time and i'll take your questions as well yes sir first of all none of this has been confirmed by a coroner as being caused by the the rain event the floods however at this time there are there are investigations into four deaths there's one injury and one person missing that's correct yes sir is there high water equipment or anything deployed yeah yeah that there there certainly is a now uh by the way it's it's uh all over the state and and i'll let general waddell come up and tell you how his forces are arrayed i did authorize him yesterday to go to 250 yes sir in terms of the number of national guardsmen activated for this particular incident overnight i think he pulled the trigger on 114 of those individuals of course that could have changed since your briefing this morning but go ahead yeah so no that strength number will continue to go up over the next 12 to 24 hours in terms of the overall forces that we have as far as the high water vehicles currently we have 20 high water vehicles in 10 boats in calcutta parish four boats and four high water vehicles in vermillion parish we've got five high water vehicles and two boats in east baton rouge and we also have a quick reaction force in belle chasse that has seven higher high water vehicles ready to go please note that we'll continue to increase the number of high water vehicles that we have we're hoping to get to 20 for east baton rouge by the end of the evening and as we get more requests that come in through web eoc we'll continue to do our best to support that i'm sorry you said you're ramped up i'm sorry right now we last as of last night we had 114 so the next time we do our report the numbers will go up and the governor has authorized us to go to 250 and certainly if we need to go beyond that i'll go back to the governor for his permission thank you for mr thank you and getting back to the question that you asked earlier uh just a few minutes ago the east baton rouge parish coroner did confirm the death of a 33 year old male he was found in a flooded vehicle after the water receded in baton rouge and this was the vehicle on blue bonnet drive and he's confirmed that the death is considered storm related yes sir i understand it's still investigation on the power this has not been confirmed yet uh potentially they were on oxygen and needed needed the power in order to receive oxygen yes sir do you anticipate of requesting federal relief yeah well we're we're continuing to put the numbers uh together uh in terms of how much individual assistance might be necessary the the public assistance has been relatively limited thus far and there's really not a lot of public assistance that's required that we can't provide for ourselves and the first thing you have to state in that request for a federal declaration is that the the disaster is such that you don't have the personnel or the equipment necessary to fully respond at this point we don't think that's going to be the case on the public assistance side we are putting information out to the parishes uh so that individuals can go online and tell us about their damages to their homes us and the individual assistance may be a different uh story altogether and so we're going to be putting that together over the next uh several days and quite frankly the event isn't over because we have more rain coming today and tonight and then again tomorrow and so and through thursday so we we have to be very careful about that and i want to remind people that it isn't just baton rouge and lake charles uh they they got the worst of it last night uh but any any place in south louisiana could get it again tonight and then through the rest of the week any other questions okay well look thank you all very much i appreciate you you're coming out i i would ask us left lift up in prayer all the families of the individuals that we just talked about who are deceased or injured or missing and let's make sure we pull together let's be good neighbors to one another in this time when when we have uh you know so many people whose lives are upside down but that's especially the case down in southwest louisiana where where we know individuals uh have had their homes now damaged by natural disasters three times since august and some for the first time in this flood and they didn't flood in hurricane delta for example so let's do that let's pull together and then we will let you know when the next press conference is and thank you very much for covering this today thank you for doing that after her he is thank you