Francine weakens into tropical storm, leaves thousands without power in Louisiana

MORGAN CITY, La. (AP) — Francine weakened Thursday after striking Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane that knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses, sent storm surge rushing into coastal communities and raised flood fears in New Orleans and beyond as drenching rains spread over the northern Gulf Coast.

New Orleans awoke to widespread power outages and debris-covered streets. Just before sunrise, street lights on some blocks were working but large swaths of the city were without power. The roar of home generators was evident outside some houses.

Some 3 to 6 inches (8 to 15 centimeters) of rain were possible in parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and the Florida Panhandle, with up to 10 inches (25 centimeters) possible in some spots in parts of Alabama and Florida, forecasters said, warning of the potential threat of scattered flash flooding as farflung as Jackson, Mississippi; Birmingham, Alabama; Memphis, Tennessee; and Atlanta.

Francine slammed the Louisiana coast Wednesday evening with 100 mph (155 kph) winds in coastal Terrebonne Parish, battering a fragile coastal region that hasn’t fully recovered from a series of devastating hurricanes in 2020 and 2021. It then moved at a fast clip toward New Orleans, pounding the city with torrential rains.

In New Orleans, rushing water nearly enveloped a pickup truck in an underpass, trapping the driver inside. A man who lives nearby grabbed a hammer, waded into the waist-high water, smashed the window and pulled the driver out. It was all captured on live TV by a WDSU-TV news crew Wednesday night.

After guiding the man to shore, Miles Crawford said: “I just had to go in there are do it.”

“I’m a nurse, so got to save lives, right?” Crawford, an emergency room nurse at University Medical Center, said seconds after the rescue. In an interview later outside his home, Crawford had a large bandage on his hand, cut in the rescue.

“I’m used to high-stress, high-level things on a daily basis,” he said. “We deal with things like that all the time, so it was nothing out of the ordinary.”

There were no immediate reports of deaths or injuries. TV news broadcasts from coastal