Support for Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by Entergy.

Louisiana is strengthening our power grid throughout the state.

We're reinforcing infrastructure to prepare for stronger storms, reduce outages, and respond quicker when you do need us because together we power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred B and Ruth B Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum.

Located in Jennings City Hall, the museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is a historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.

Ten years later, memories of the 2016 flood remain etched in the minds of the people across Louisiana.

Storms dumped more than two feet of rain across multiple parishes.

Nearly 150,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed.

More than a dozen people lost their lives.

But amid the devastation were incredible stories of neighbors helping neighbors and communities across Louisiana.

Coming together in this special edition of Louisiana, the state we're in will revisit the tragedy and meet those who stepped up to help.

We'll also look at the progress made to reduce flood risks across the region.

Hi everyone.

I'm Christina Jensen and I'm Johnny Atkinson.

Next week marks the 10th anniversary of the Great flood of 2016.

Well, the flooding began early on August 12th with storms dumping 2 to 3in of rain per hour.

Floodwaters quickly overcame the drainage systems and sent rivers rising to record levels.

Many people were trapped watching as the water rose higher and higher into their homes.

If the water got too high, I was going to try to swim it, and so I put the driver's license in my pocket so I would be identified.

It started with an unnamed, slow moving tropical low pressure running into an intense Gulf moisture.

The Great Flood of 2016 didn't start out with warnings of an approaching hurricane.

It was an overnight test of survival.

Traditionally, rain in our area.

It gets here because of an approaching front.

Whereas we've experienced tropical storms and hurricanes.

We at Red cross had been watching the weather situation because there was some potential for there to be some problems.

Teachers and students notice the usual heavy rain and were at first surprised to get the day off.

It was actually the first week of school that year.

I'm a teacher and we were only in school for 1 or 2 days.

Ended up getting to stay home from school on the day it started raining.

We didn't put furniture up, we didn't put stuff up.

We didn't think it was going to be that bad.

It had been raining a lot, but it wasn't any inkling that this is going to be an event that we got to prepare for.

Warnings were delivered to homes around the Baton Rouge area about heavy rains and possible flooding.

We don't know how wide the water is going to get in those areas.

This is unprecedented.

So we don't have records that we can go back and see.

I picked up everything off the floor, put on the countertops and the chairs on top of the toilet because I was expecting to get a few inches of water.

Friday we spent most of the day preparing the house, preparing the yard, getting things up high.

Packing as much as we could into the car.

It was just something that we didn't expect and it was an experience that was overwhelming.

The heavy rainfall moved in from the Gulf, then seemed to stall when it got to the Louisiana Capital Region.

Well, there was an upper level low that was parked right on top of a void.

Catahoula Concordia Parishes.

And it sat there and it spun and it spun and it spun.

There's nowhere in the world that can sustain that amount of rain in a short period of time.

The rain was strong, but many people went to sleep thinking it was a typical August rainstorm.

But after just a few hours, the alarms went off.

We were woken up by one of the National Weather Service alerts.

You know the alarm when your phone that goes off and when I checked the flood gauge, it wasn't a curve.

At that point, there was no crest predicted.

It was a straight line pointing up.

Everything happened so fast.

I'm waking up from a dead sleep after two hours of sleep, and I stepped in water.

By this time, to get to my car, I had to put on boots.

I had to put on a rain slicker because it was still raining.

Water began to rise at a terrifying speed, catching families completely off guard.

There might be isolated places that got ten inches of rain, but there was no expectation that anything was going to stall.

30 hours later, we had 38 shelters open.

We had people that had to be evacuated.

We had people that had to be relocated elsewhere because they did not have a home.

Now is the time to move out because if you don't do it now, then it becomes a rescue mission.

Later on.

Some people left their homes seeking refuge with friends and family, and some had no place to go.

I called my son.

He said, you're going to have to get whatever you can get going to have to climb the rafters and the attic, and you're going to have to try to beat out the vents, because if the water comes up in the attic, you're going to you're going to die.

And those were his exact words.

He says, you have to do this.

This guy on the main street that we don't even know, he just kind of came out and asked us.

He says, are y'all trying to get out of here?

He said, stay on my bumper.

I'm going to guide you out.

And by the grace of God, he made a way for us.

And I was I was able to ride his bumper and he brought us out where we could get out.

I'm trying to manage the IT aspects of the Red cross operation, while also concerned about is my house going to flood?

Parents only had minutes to wake up their children and grab their family pets, and for many, there was no time to pack suitcases or secure valuable family heirlooms from the shelves.

Volunteers use trucks and boats helping people trapped in their homes get to safety.

We just have a lot of people being good neighbors.

You know, we always knew that that Louisiana was full of good people, and we are seeing that right now.

I heard him scream and say, Donna, we're here, you know, or we're going to get you.

And so they took the chainsaw and they told me to back up.

And then, you know, they helped me out when daylight broke.

Entire neighborhoods had completely vanished under a sea of water, and a true emotional devastation was setting in.

The water was building up here.

How did it get.

Yeah.

When we got back to our house, the water had already receded.

The water line was about neck level to me.

They came over here and dug through the mud and tried to find a little bit of Monterey.

They just wanted to surprise me, I guess with something.

The true scope of the disaster said in days later, when thousands of families realized they lost everything and faced weeks, months or years to rebuild their lives.

The majority of affected neighborhoods were located outside of traditional high risk flood zones, so nearly 80% of the families did not carry flood insurance.

It was an emotional thing.

Didn't have flood insurance, of course.

So how are we going to pay for all of this?

You're torn between worrying about yourself and what's good for your family, your own family.

But then also, how do you help your loved ones that are around?

And it's a tough thing to do when you're dealing with these situations.

There was a true emotional devastation setting in.

Days later when the floodwaters finally receded.

I can still smell the mud, the flood mud.

It was everywhere.

I could see that my fridge had floated.

It was tilted on its side.

My furniture had floated.

I recruited ham radio operators and put ham radio operators into shelters.

That became the line of communication to the shelters with the cell phone system out.

You don't know how to say thank you.

It's like you wish you had the money just to pay everybody because they're working so hard.

Families began cleaning up, tearing down walls and insulation and searching for personal items washed away in the flood.

It was pretty upsetting.

Well, we had a lot of friends, friends and family who actually came over and they helped us get the house.

Muddy sofas and rotting furniture were carried out and stacked in massive piles, along with family heirlooms lining the streets, waiting for the debris trucks.

You go back to the basics.

When you're in a life threatening situation.

Honestly, I just sang Jesus Loves Me.

I couldn't sleep at night because I thought her house was going to flood, and so I would just sleep on the couch and I would wake up every few minutes.

Many families were stuck waiting on FEMA or insurance to come through while living in FEMA trailers, hotels, or their badly damaged homes.

That flood left a generation of Baton Rouge families with a profound understanding of how quickly a life can be washed away.

I just ask everyone to continue to be patient, to continue to work with us.

And as I always do, I ask for a continued prayers for the people of Louisiana.

I just pray that Baton Rouge and the capital area never sees a flood like this again.

You don't realize how much something is worth or something means to you until you don't have it anymore.

First responders were overwhelmed by calls for help, even as many of their own homes filled with water.

They rushed to respond, joined by everyday Louisianans.

That spirit of community continued long after the floodwaters receded.

Attention all units.

The air is being held for emergency traffic only.

Today is going to be today where it's not going to be a good day for you, and it's not going to be a good day for your residents.

And it's not going to be a good day for your community.

So I would advise you to go home and get home as fast as you can.

For days, the rain never stopped.

Each morning, emergency officials met, hoping the drainage systems would hold.

Then the warning came.

There was little time to prepare.

People rushed home to save whatever they could.

When I got to my road, it was chocolate block full with pickup trucks and trailers from the front of my road all the way to the back.

And it was people that we didn't even know, and they were just stopping at people's houses trying to help them get whatever they could out of their house.

Before long, the floodwaters overtook the very people trying to save their community.

It looked like the Mississippi River just flowed through our fire station and took it.

Thank God we had moved out trucks.

The community rally behind me and my volunteers, because I wasn't able to go to my house and help my wife clean my house out because we were taking care of the community.

Ascension parish became one of the hardest hit areas.

Six fire stations, six schools, nearly 70% of businesses in Santa Monica, all damaged by floodwaters.

We did tons and tons of water rescues.

We got five boats here in our fire department.

The fire departments that surround us had boats, and that was like around the clock for a good week, you know, because a lot of people were caught off guard.

But years later, that isn't what James remembers most.

He remembers the coffins.

We were just catching coffins that were floating down the water and floating down the main road, and we were just tying them to mailboxes and tying them to trees and tie them everywhere.

What's going through your mind as you see the coffins?

This has to be the worst devastation that I will ever face.

While firefighters searched flooded neighborhoods, another rescue effort was taking shape online.

There came that day when social media was just blowing up with all these people that were flooding.

You know, the water was coming up and it was still rise, and they didn't know how high it was going to get.

A lot of people needing help reaching out, and we knew it was going to be a bad situation.

Before sunrise, Livingston Parish resident John Bridgers created a Facebook page called Cajun Navy 2016.

The organization later became one of several groups using the Cajun Navy name.

Within an hour, thousands were asking to be rescued while others volunteered their boats.

I woke up at 1:00 in the morning and I created that Facebook page, and within an hour or so it already had like 8000 people following it.

I probably had 2000 messages at that time from people needing to be rescued, to people that were out there with their boats, needing to know where to go to help somebody, going to some of those houses and seeing the people with their pets and their kids on the rooftops.

It was unbelievable that you could just pull your boat up to the roof itself.

What began as neighbors helping neighbors quickly became one of the largest volunteer rescue efforts Louisiana had ever seen.

I've never seen anything like that happen.

It was just on such a mass scale.

It was an unforgivable moment.

Eventually, the rescues ended, but recovery was only beginning.

Families returned home to find everything they owned destroyed.

Teachers worried not only about rebuilding their own homes, but helping students who had lost everything, too.

That's when Louisiana Public Broadcasting put out a call of its own.

We'll be asking you, our viewers, to come together to support the thousands of South Louisiana teachers and students who lost everything in their schools.

I immediately knew that I had to figure out some way that LPB could help the families, and especially the children that had lost everything.

The response was immediate.

Within days, truckloads of school supplies began arriving from PBS stations across the country.

Probably 45 or 50 public TV stations started contacting me, asking me what we needed.

I made at least started contacting teachers and families asking, you know, what were the critical needs?

And we got them basically all the supplies they needed because everything was lost.

The station's auditorium became a temporary distribution center.

Teachers filled wagons with backpacks and school supplies for students starting over.

We basically turned our auditorium into like, a big, huge garage sale.

Every single person pretty much would tear up.

And teachers will do anything to help the kids that they teach.

And I knew that was going to be important for LPB to step in and help those teachers help their students.

Ten years later, schools have reopened.

Many homes have been rebuilt.

New fire stations stand were flood waters once rose, but the people who lived through those August days remember something more lasting than the flood itself.

The things that we have done and accomplished, and the people's lives that we've saved and impacted in a positive way, is just astronomical.

The greatest legacy of the 2016 flood wasn't what the water destroyed.

It was the people who answered the call.

In recent weeks, a growing rift has emerged between groups using the Cajun Navy name one group Cajun Navy.

2016 has filed a defamation lawsuit against the United Cajun Navy and its leaders.

In response, the United Cajun Navy has accused the other group of financial mismanagement.

The National Weather Service declared the 2016 floods a one and 1000 year event.

But what caused the water recently and say for so long?

I talked to experts to find out.

I'll never forget.

August 11th, 2016.

The rains came and they kept coming and coming and coming.

It wasn't an approaching hurricane or tornado, it was just a prediction of rain.

That didn't stop the Great Flood of 2016.

Saturday over the Baton Rouge, Lafayette and Dinner Springs area for days, dropping an incredible 7 trillion gallons of water.

John Pastor was anchoring news at and reports of possible rain quickly turned into dramatic reports of flooding.

We were standing at this anchor desk reporting that were seeing neighborhoods very familiar to us turn into lakes, streets that we travel every day turned into rivers and bayous.

I mean, this was Noah's Ark kind of stuff.

Josh Egis is the chief meteorologist at work and was reporting details of that storm ten years ago.

There was no escaping the flood.

It touched just about every life here in Baton Rouge.

If your home itself didn't take water, you certainly know somebody or had a family member who did.

Heavy rainfall poured into southeast Louisiana for days, with rivers and bayous rising faster than communities could prepare.

Eight local rivers broke historical flood records, overwhelming the drainage basins we prepare for.

Typically, what is an event that could happen every 10 or 15 years, not something that would reach the level of a percentage chance of being a 1 in 1000 year event.

LSU did a study of this.

This wasn't the 100 year flood, the 1000 year flood.

This was more like the 10,000 year flood.

Unlike standard flash floods that disappear quickly, the immense volume of water stayed trapped in residential areas.

Waterways rose at vertical rates, surpassing major flood thresholds, causing flooding in areas entirely outside of the traditional flood zones.

So our flood basins were not designed to handle the amount of water we put it picked up.

In that event, there's just no world.

And even where a natural drainage in this region was equipped to handle the amount of water that we received.

I think the Amy River over there, it got up the highest.

It got way above flood stage was like 47ft.

The great flood was caused by massive amounts of tropical rain with no winds to push that storm away and once dry.

Official surveys confirmed that over 146,000 homes were damaged or completely destroyed.

I went home that day and I was like, that was some really heavy rain for a short period of time.

And in my head I'm like, if we get a couple more rounds just like that, we're going to have some problems.

Little did I know, the next morning it would start raining that heavy and not stop for more than 30 hours.

The flooding continued even after the rain stopped as rivers overflowed their banks, sending water into areas that had never flooded before.

Now, only ten years removed.

Even when I forecast a heavy rain event today that I am sure is not going to be that serious.

People are worried and are afraid because they dealt with that ten years ago.

A lot of people have built back in those flood areas, but they've done things to protect their homes, like building them up, building walls and levees around them, which is a good thing.

And because, you know, it's going to happen again.

The 2016 flood sparked renewed focus on infrastructure and storm preparedness, and local leaders called for stronger drainage systems, improved flood control and better early warning.

If we go another 2030 years, inevitably that amount of rain we see can fall here 30 years down the line.

Will be that ready?

I don't know, because people may that the thought may the fear may wear off.

It's been ten years and I think communication notification the technology is vastly improved.

Today, Louisiana residents are encouraged to lay out a plan to protect family, home and finances, be prepared for emergencies with food, medicine and an evacuation plan, and be prepared for home utilities and drainage.

Whether it's your house, your family, your community, get a game plan.

Figure out what you're going to take with you.

You have to leave.

Help your neighbors do the same thing.

I hope that we never deal with a 2016 again, but it's also my hope that if we have to, we're going to be able to message that, prepare for that, and have that forecast more and more days in advance before it does happen again.

By August 15th, many rivers across south Louisiana had reached or exceeded flood stage.

In the years since, local, state, and federal leaders have proposed a number of flood mitigation efforts aimed at reducing future flood risk.

But ten years later, many of those projects have yet to be completed.

We're standing at one of the region's largest flood mitigation projects, ten years after the Great Flood of 2016.

We're taking a look at how Louisiana is better prepared for flooding.

Louisiana's flood preparedness continues to be tested.

Recent rain from Tropical Storm Arthur provided the latest example.

While both storms brought heavy rain, experts say they were very different events to see how flood forecasting has changed since 2016.

We started with someone who helped forecast both storms.

So this is where all the forecasters gather the data.

They analyze the data, then they produce a forecast.

Since the great flood of 2016, many of the tools forecasters rely on have continued to evolve.

During the 2016 flood, one of the National Weather Service key flash flood tools was still in the testing phase.

Today, it's helping forecasters identify the most extreme rainfall events in real time.

For Arthur, the system was in operation.

So you can see over here in a Bulls parish where there was over 29 to 30in of rain in a 12 hour period.

And so that tells us, hey, we got a big event.

During Tropical Storm Arthur, the Amy River crested at about 30ft high, but well below the nearly 46ft record set during the 2016 flood.

Arthur also highlighted how the National Weather Service has changed the way communicates flood risk today.

Its warnings give people a clearer understanding of how serious a flood can become.

We started to see that 1520 year return period, along with the the string float getting way up there, we will issue what we call the considerable flash flood.

And that flash flood means okay.

It may start getting into homes and businesses.

For Arthur, we actually had to go to catastrophic.

And that's usually reserved for when people are going to have to get rescued out of the flood zone.

For 2016, you think that would have been instrumental if we would have had that back then?

Yeah, it definitely would have.

People would have taken the warnings a lot more serious.

We did issue a flash flood emergency, but it did not have that tag associated with it where it said, hey, this is catastrophic.

Before cast alone can't stop floodwaters in central.

The flood of 2016 changed the city's approach to flood protection.

So the first thing we did, the two previous administrations decided it was important to build a drain, a master plan, a drainage master plan.

Let's take inventory of everything we have all of our ditches, all of our culverts that cross the roads everywhere that you could have a problem.

Since 2016, central has invested about $25 million in flood protection.

But mayor Wade Evans says the work is far from over.

That's why the city has spent years studying how water moves through central.

We developed a program we call the Oda.

Basically, every drop of water that falls from the sky, we know where it goes.

But knowing where that water goes helps you control how development is done.

We dig every day.

It's a recurring thing.

The excavators never stopped.

We've got about 27 areas that our crews hit, but flood protection doesn't stop at city limits.

Some of the region's largest projects are designed to reduce flood risk across the entire Amit River basin.

One of the largest is the commit River Diversion Canal, a nearly $1 billion U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers project designed to divert flood waters from the Komi River into the Mississippi before they reach communities downstream.

Paul Sawyer says it's a critical piece of a much larger flood protection system.

What's important about the comet River Diversion Canal is that it's one piece of an entire system, and so it's crucial to providing flood protection in the Amiot River basin and the capital Region.

The 2016 flood revealed to us everything that can go wrong when all of the system fails.

Even with the diversion canal, officials say flood protection depends on a much larger network of projects, and many of them are still years from completion.

The sad truth is, if somebody asked, are we or are we safer today than we were ten years ago?

The honest answer is is no because we don't have any projects that are completed.

This project was designed for a 1983 flood, so we had a 1983 flood.

We had 2016 flood, which was ten years ago, and we're still working on this.

Major flood control projects may still be years away, but preparing for the next flood hasn't waited.

From improved forecast to better local planning and regional coordination, communities across south Louisiana have changed the way they prepare for flooding.

The ability to predict or to forecast the rainfall events is much better.

The tools that emergency managers, public officials have at their disposal are better.

I think planning coordination is significantly better than it was, you know, ten years ago, 15 or 20 years ago.

But the goal isn't to prevent every flood, it's to reduce the risk when the next one comes.

You can never eliminate flood risk.

There's always a chance of of some event happening that you never considered.

The flood of 2016 changed Louisiana.

Ten years later, its legacy continues to shape how the state prepares for the next flood.

As we mark the 10th anniversary of the Great Flood, we're thinking of everyone who lived through it and those still dealing with its aftermath.

The lessons of the 2016 flood continue to shape Halloween to prepare for the future.

Thank you for watching the special edition of Louisiana, The State we're In.

Support for.

Louisiana.

The state we're in is provided by Entergy.

Louisiana is strengthening our power grid throughout the state.

We're reinforcing infrastructure to prepare for stronger storms, reduce outages, and respond quicker when you do need us.

Because together we power life.

Additional support provided by the Fred B and Ruth B Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum, located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is a historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and by Visit Baton Rouge and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

And viewers like you.

Thank you.