NEW ORLEANS _ Barry strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane Saturday morning as it neared the Louisiana coast, buffeting this fragile, low-lying region with an onslaught of water and wind that downed power lines, flooded coastal highways and trapped some residents in their homes.
Early morning, the tropical storm was offshore about 50 miles west of Morgan City, a town of 12,000 about 70 miles southwest of New Orleans, moving slowly northwest with maximum sustained winds of 75 miles per hour.
Before dawn, nearly a dozen residents were stranded on Isle de Jean Charles, a slender strip of land about 50 miles southwest of New Orleans that was already slowly sinking due to wetland erosion and rising sea levels. At 4:30 a.m., the Coast Guard received a distress call that several families were trapped on Island Road as water came up to the roof of their homes.
Helicopters rescued 11 people _ more than a quarter of the island's population _ and two cats, said Lexie Preston, a spokesman for the Coast Guard. Most of the island's residents had evacuated ahead of the storm.
"Right now, the winds are causing havoc," Morgan City Mayor Frank "Boo" Grizzaffi said after a morning tour of his city to survey the damage. Around 4 a.m., heavy gusts of winds began to knock tree limbs and electrical poles to the ground, he said, leaving nearly a third of homes and businesses without power.
"It's still dangerous out there, limbs all over the street," Grizzaffi said. "And the worst is yet to come."
Already, a Morgan City fire crew had traveled across the Atchafalaya River to rescue a woman in the neighboring town of Berwick after a live power line fell on top of her trailer and trapped her inside.
While Barry was expected to make landfall as a weak hurricane, with winds just barely over the threshold of 75 mph, officials urged residents not to be complacent. Heavy rain and storm surges were likely to bring a high risk of flash flooding and river flooding, the National Hurricane Center warned. And with most of the rain bands concentrated in the southern half of the storm, the bulk of the rain would not drop until after landfall.
"Please stay patient & vigilant," the city of New Orleans urged residents in a morning text message. "Barry still expected to bring heavy rain today through Sunday."
The National Hurricane Center has predicted that the slow-moving storm could dump about 10 to 20 inches of rain across south-central and southeast Louisiana and southwestern Mississippi, resulting in "dangerous, life-threatening flooding." Isolated areas of Louisiana could see as much as 25 inches.
Officials remained confident that the levees protecting New Orleans would hold up, even as water overtopped a back levee Saturday morning in Plaquemines Parish, a fragile finger of land south of the city.
Over the last week, many feared that the Mississippi River, already swollen from months of unusually high rainfall, would overtop the levees protecting the city. But late Friday the National Weather Service announced that the risk of overtopping was minimal: the storm surge had already passed, and the river would crest on Monday at 17.1 feet _ two feet lower than previously predicted. The levees protect up to 20 feet.
With a hurricane warning in effect for a 150-mile stretch of the Louisiana coast, about 3,000 National Guardsmen were activated across Louisiana _ more than a third of them in the New Orleans area _ poised to respond to emergencies with boats, helicopters, and high water vehicles.
Still, with about half of this historic Deep South city below sea level, residents were unsure how their complicated flood protection system of pumps, catch basins and drainage canals would hold up.
Since Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, leaving an estimated $151 billion in damage and more than 1,800 deaths, local, state and federal officials have spent about $20 billion bolstering levees, flood walls and drainage pumps in an effort to protect the city from future storms.
But on Wednesday, heavy thunderstorms flooded streets across the area. The historic neighborhood of Treme received more than eight inches of rain in three hours, and water seeped into barber shops, dry cleaners and restaurants.
"They keep saying the pumps are working," said Melvin Benoit, a chef at Willie Mae's Scotch House who lives in Treme. "But it doesn't seem like they're working."
Across the region, some migrant families directly in the storm's path who were mindful of threatened raids said they were too scared to evacuate and planned to weather the storm at home.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in New Orleans announced ahead of the storm that they would suspend enforcement actions this weekend in areas of southern Louisiana and coastal Mississippi. But migrant advocates called on ICE to suspend the raids in surrounding states so that migrants felt safe evacuating.
Balbina, 34, a Mexican immigrant in Houma, La., who asked to be identified only by first name, said she was afraid to leave her mobile home, even though a voluntary evacuation had been issued for her area.
She and her husband, a boat builder, have three children, ages 14, 10 and 5. The two youngest are U.S. citizens.
Afraid to call police in an emergency, since the sheriff in surrounding Terrebonne Parish supports ICE, Balbina said she planned to rely on neighbors _ fellow immigrants who have stocked up on food, medications and other essentials.
"I worry for my kids," she said by phone from her home. "I can try to protect them, but it's a risk. If we go, we don't know if we can return."
