20 inches of rain? East St. Mary digs out; power outage across region

East St. Mary awoke Thursday morning to downed branches, downed trees, downed power lines and no electricity.

Hurricane Francine came ashore about 5 p.m. Wednesday with Category 2 force winds of 100 mph about 30 miles from Morgan City in Terrebonne Parish. the National Hurricane Center said.

Some local officials expressed doubt about the landfall site announced by the National center, insisting it was closer to Morgan City.

"We took a direct hit," Morgan City Mayor Lee Dragna said in a Facebook video Thursday.

A city rain gauge with a 20-inch capacity overflowed, Dragna said. Berwick Mayor Duval Arthur said a 10-inch gauge overflowed there.

Trees were downed, sometimes on top of houses, from Patterson east to Morgan City.

In his Facebook post, Dragna said two portable pumps put into action near Lakeside Subdivision helped bring down water levels that threatened to flood homes there.

St. Mary Levee District Tim Matte recalled the water level on the Walnut Street canal.

:"It was the highest level I've ever seen on the canal," Matte said.

In Berwick, Arthur reported that 10 streets there were blocked by downed trees, although those streets had been cleared by mid-morning. Some partical blockages remained.

And "we had tremendous flooding in the streets," Arthur said.

The problems were especially acute in the Country Club Estates area and near Sixth Street.

"It was the worst Category 1 or 2 storm I've ever seen," said Arthur, a former parish homeland security director. "Andrew wasn't as bad."

Andrew came ashore in 1992 packing 110 mph wind and caused widespread damage in St. Mary and Iberia.

Both Dragna and Arthur said their homes sustained storm damage from Francine.

In Patterson, Police Chief Garrett Grogan said street flooding had receded by Thursday morning.

Fallen trees damaged homes on Live Oak and Clement streets.

"Right now, they're trying to get the electricity back."

Full power restoration could take days.

At 1 p.m., the poweroutage.us website reported that 13,420 of 19,001 electric customers in St. Mary were without power.

In Assumption, 8,621 of 10,440 customers were blacked out.

One main feed from Cleco provides electrical power to Morgan City.

Dragna said in his Facebook post that Cleco is assessing the damage

"Once we get fed electricity from Cleco ... we'll be able to assess," Dragma said.

For now, the task is to restore power to sewage substations and the water system to maintain those services, Dragna said.

For all its damage, Francine had one virtue: It was fast.

The National Weather Service reported that the hurricane moved through coastal Louisiana at 17 mph and didn't linger to dump even more rain. it weakened rapidly after making landfall.

The predicted storm surge of 5-10 feet didn't materialize. The Atchafalaya River stage at Morgan City rose less than a foot overnight and remained below 4 feet, well below the flood stage.

The Franklin Canal gate, closed as the storm approached, had been reopened by late morning Thursday. Matte said the Levee District was waiting for water to recede to safe levels before reopening the Bayou Chene Flood Control structure, designed to prevent back-flooding from the Atchafalaya, and the Bayou Teche Flood Control Structure, which was built to protect western and central St. Mary from storm surge flooding by way of the Charenton Canal.