Slidell, Louisiana, emergency officials deploy boats to conduct water rescues

Slidell, Louisiana, Mayor Greg Cromer said there is water in "every neighborhood in town" and local officials had to deploy boats to conduct water rescues early this morning. "In about a three hour period, we had probably five to six foot rise in the bayou and the lake estuary system that pushed water into a number of people's homes on the south side of our community," Cromer said. Slidell is located on the far east end of Lake Pontchartrain.

"We had to deploy boats at 4:00 this morning and do water rescues. We took about 15 people off their roofs off their homes," he said.

The mayor said that the water seems to be receding in the bayou area, but they do not think they have seen the "height of it yet." Cromer said officials are now using high-water vehicles to take people out of the neighborhood to the lower side of town.

Cromer warned the worst of the flooding could still be coming.

“As this storm goes north, and the winds shift out of a southeasterly direction to a southwesterly direction, it’ll start taking and pushing all that water that’s in [Lake Pontchartrain] and it begins to stack up on our side of the lake, and we’ll see another rise in water, we think this afternoon," Cromer said.