US: Officials of the geographic information systems department in the East Baton Rouge Parish city of Louisiana are mapping the extent of flood inundation for the past few days. According to the local government’s estimation, nearly 53,000 residences, 3,800 commercial buildings and 1,800 public buildings in East Baton Rouge Parish alone flooded amid storms and high water that swept through the region last week.
The first estimate that is more concrete in its measurement than the Baton Rouge Area Chamber’s numbers, which also were updated on Tuesday. Now the department is worried that their numbers are still preliminary but said they are based on calls for search and rescue, calls for sewer service, information from floodplain maps, public input and more.
Similar estimates of the number of structures damaged by flooding in surrounding parishes, many of which were hard hit, are not yet available. While city-parish officials are still conducting their full damage assessment, GIS Manager Warren Kron said Tuesday that the flooding they have mapped is “a pretty good guess” at how many structures across the parish had floodwaters reach them after devastating storms starting slamming the parish August 12.
The Baton Rouge Area Chamber has also been using maps of floodplains and neighborhoods to project how many homes and businesses may have been affected by floods, but their data has more caveats than the city-parish’s.
BRAC’s numbers are only meant to be a tally of the potential magntiude of the flood — versus the city-parish’s interpretation of how many places actually did flood — and BRAC has steered clear of deeming their numbers a damage assessment. BRAC has used data from the city-parish to help attain its assessments as well.
The city-parish’s latest numbers as of late Tuesday show that they estimate 52,944 residential structures flooded, 3,839 commercial buildings flooded and 1,775 public facilities flooded in East Baton Rouge parish. While the numbers fluctuated constantly over the first few days they started mapping it, Kron said, the changes have started to taper off.
