Hurricane Isaac 2012: Lake Tangipahoa Dam Damaged, Evacuation For Louisiana Residents
Louisiana officials are calling for residents to evacuate after Hurricane Isaac damaged a large dam.
The Lake Tangipahoa Dam is intact, but has been barraged by the storm and huge amounts of water that came along with it. Officials fear the damage may cause even more water to spill into the full river and create danger for the 50,000 residents who live downstream of the dam, located about 100 miles north of New Orleans.
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has called for buses to go into the area and assist with evacuating the residents who may be in danger of flooding, according to Tangipahoa Parish President Gordon Burgess.
The evacuations and other rescue missions are being helped along by the National Guard. Gov. Jindal called all of Louisiana's Guardsmen into action on Wednesday, and other servicemen and -women from neighboring states bring the total number of the force in Louisiana to about 8,000.
The National Guard has helped to rescue or evacuate more than 3,000 Louisianans since Isaac made landfall earlier this week.
Estimates for the havoc wreaked by the storm are already pouring in. Catastrophe modeling firm Eqecat calculated that the storm could cause as much as $1.5 billion in onshore damages.
Beyond the financial losses, at least two deaths have been reported in Louisiana and Mississippi as a result of the storm.