Baton Rouge rescuer thanks New Orleans volunteers after deadly floods
The people of New Orleans have seen the horrors of floodwater, and their actions this weekend showed that some of them had clearly not forgotten.
Rescuers helped more than 20,000 people evacuate their homes this weekend after torrential rainfall caused waterways to overflow and wreak havoc on Baton Rouge, La., and the surrounding area.
New Orleanians, who struggled through the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, were eager to help their neighbors in the state’s capital city, about an hour and a half drive northwest.
Chris Macaluso, who lives near Interstate 12 in Baton Rouge, set out in his boat to save stranded residents throughout his neighborhood on Saturday and Sunday. On both days, he told Yahoo News, he encountered dozens of men from New Orleans and the surrounding area on the same mission.
“Those guys who came up from New Orleans and Thibodaux and places like that. You know, those guys didn’t have to do that,” Macaluso said in a Monday interview. “They really risked a lot because these rescues were dangerous. The water was moving so fast in some places that it was dangerous to run a boat. So they risked a lot and we really appreciate them.”
Macaluso, 40, said that water came within six inches of his house, which is elevated about five feet above street level, and that half the homes in his community were flooded. He estimated that about 70 to 80 percent of the homes around Episcopal High School, in nearby Woodland Ridge, had been flooded. He previously told parts of the story to the Times-Picayune.
“There are houses that have seven feet of water or more in them,” Macaluso told Yahoo News. “I was able to launch my boat off my driveway yesterday morning and go throughout the neighborhood to get elderly people and children to safety. We got the last two folks out last night around 9 o’clock. Then we went back through this morning.”
Slideshow: ‘Unprecedented’ flooding slams Gulf Coast
On Saturday, Macaluso joined forces with about 14 others boats. Several volunteers came from New Orleans and Houma to help rescue men, women and children in North Baton Rouge around North Sherwood Forest Boulevard and Greenwell Springs Road. They brought the stranded residents to higher ground.
“Personally, over the two days, I think I got to about 50 or so,” Macaluso said. “But I think combined, the guys who helped us from New Orleans, and some other people, they were pulling thousands of people out — volunteers were pulling thousands of people out.”
When he went to bed Saturday night, there was no water on his street. When he woke up at 6 a.m. Sunday, it was about three feet deep. By Sunday night, it was nearly five feet deep.
“We stayed up there as long as we could before the police made us leave, because the water was coming up so fast that if we’d have stayed past dark, we wouldn’t have been able to drive out. We would have been stranded ourselves,” he said.
The water, he said, is subsiding quickly and moving south toward Ascension Parish, about 24 miles south.
His father, Joe Macaluso, 69, who had been on many rescue missions himself over the years, said some of the scenes reminded him of Katrina: a mile or two on dry roads and then suddenly a lake with houses in it.
“There were literally hundreds of guys who showed up with their boats and they sort of found ways — because everyone knows the area — to get in and launch their boats off of roads that were sort of flooded,” Joe Macaluso told Yahoo News.
Jonathan and Julia Pretus, of New Orleans, announced on Facebook and Twitter Sunday afternoon that they were going to fill a truck with supplies and drive it up to Baton Rouge later that day. Fellow New Orleanians donated food, water, toiletries, diapers and money, among other things. By 7 p.m., the truck was full.
“At first it was friends and acquaintances, but then it was strangers, people we never met before. The post we had done had just been shared and reposted. People from all over the city, all different neighborhoods, all different backgrounds,” Jonathan Pretus told Yahoo News.
They left their house around 8 p.m. and it took about two hours to reach Baton Rouge because they had to take back roads.
Pretus said he went to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and still has a lot of family members and friends who live there. He said he felt helpless looking at picture after picture on Facebook of flooded backyards where he had spent countless afternoons. They decided they needed to help somehow.
“Baton Rouge was incredibly welcoming to so many New Orleanians after the storm. They took on such a large number of displaced residents in Baton Rouge. It’s kind of the obvious reciprocal thing to do is to help the people who helped you.”
He said everyone in New Orleans knows someone in Baton Rouge or has spent time there.
“It wasn’t just a good thing to do. It was the obvious thing to do,” he said.
Pretus and his wife plan to collect more supplies for the people of Baton Rouge next Friday and Saturday. They are also accepting donations on PayPal at Julia.Pretus@gmail.com.
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