‘Y’all get ya floaties on.’ Hurricane Ida forces water rescues in Moss Point, Pascagoula

When he woke up on Monday, Joey Pettey thought the worst was over. Then the rain started.

The remnants of Hurricane Ida brought hours of heavy rain to Jackson County on Monday morning, overwhelming drainage systems in Pascagoula and Moss Point and flooding some streets with several feet of standing water.

Earl Etheridge, Jackson County’s director of Emergency Services, said 15 people had to be rescued from their homes in Moss Point, and an additional five in Pascagoula. The Pascagoula Fire Department also conducted at least one high-water rescue of a person trapped in their vehicle.

Etheridge said the county estimates about 300 homes and businesses were cut off by the floodwaters, and that about 125 to 150 took on water, anywhere from an inch or two up to a foot.

The back of Pettey’s home on Pascagoula Street got about 6 inches of water, which dragged bits of grass and dirt into the section of the house where his 75-year-old father lives.

“Y’all get ya floaties on,” he wrote on Facebook. “We usually don’t get any water in the house during most all storms except big storms like Katrina and we only got a few inches in the back of the house all drainage is stopped up can’t even flush the toilets.”

By 1 p.m., most of the water in the house had receded. The street, where water collects at a dip about three houses away from Pettey’s house, was drying off, too. But the damage was done.

Pettey, who does not have flood insurance, said he expects to spend up to $10,000 out of pocket on repairs.

While Etheridge and a National Weather Service meteorologist said the rainfall was not terribly unusual for a slow-moving tropical system, several Pascagoula residents and city engineer Geoffrey Clemens said the Monday morning rain was like nothing they’d seen before.

“It’s apples and oranges because thank God we didn’t have 15 to 20 feet of water coming from the Gulf, but as far as the rain event, it was more than what Katrina ever put on us,” Clemens said.

What happened in Jackson County?

As Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana and moved north yesterday, Jackson County saw storm surge ranging from 8 feet on the west side of the county to four feet on the east, Etheridge said.

Jason Beaman, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Mobile office, said most of the county also got 2-4 inches of rain yesterday.

On Monday morning, as Ida’s southern feeder bands moved in, the rain accelerated. Beaman said that at Trent Lott International Airport, about 7 inches of rain fell from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.

“That’s some really impressive rainfall that came in late this morning,” Beaman said.

Etheridge put the rainfall total even higher, at eight to 12 inches on the county’s east side.

“Well, the ground’s saturated so it won’t absorb,” he said. “It can’t run off cause there’s no place for it to go to. So these low-lying areas started seeing impacts from the rain.”

Moss Point Mayor Billy Knight said the city got 14.5 inches of rain over 12 hours.

As water flooded in, the rescue calls started.

Moss Point Mayor Billy Knight said that at one point, there were 20 people at a shelter the city set up. By about 4 p.m., only two were sill there.

Outdated infrastructure?

Sunday had been stressful enough for Pettey: His daughter and three grandchildren in New Orleans were forced to evacuate when their roof blew off as Hurricane Ida passed over the city.

His mother and great-aunt were riding out the storm in the Metairie area. The last text he got from his mom early Monday said their roof was partially gone and rain was coming into the house. He hasn’t heard from them since and is praying their phones died. He’s hoping to get to New Orleans on Tuesday morning.

When the heavy rain began Monday morning, Pettey figured the street and yard would flood, because they often do during storms. But he didn’t count on the water making it inside, too.

He posted photographs on Facebook of dining chairs practically swimming. At one point, he waded out into the street to see if he could unclog the storm drain. He lost his footing in the knee-deep water and ended up soaked up to his waist.

By 1 p.m., the water had mostly subsided but was still pooling in his father’s kitchen, and bits of grass were stuck to the baseboard of the wall. The yard behind Pettey’s house looked like a pond.

Pettey blames Pascagoula’s drainage system. He pointed to a pipe in his front yard that he said had been there since the 1900s.

“If we had good drainage we wouldn’t have any issues at all,” he said.

An expensive problem to solve

Clemens said that wasn’t true for the rain Pascagoula got on Monday.

“You can’t design for this rain event,” he said.

He acknowledged that the city’s drainage infrastructure needs updates. Parts of it were installed in the 1940s during a World War II-era building boom to house Ingalls Shipbuilding workers.

Today, many areas of the city need new bigger drainage pipes and catch basins. And Pascagoula’s working on it, he said.

“You’re talking about tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to take care of it across the city,” he said. “It’s nothing they can do overnight.”

Knight said updating Moss Point’s aging infrastructure is a priority for his administration.

Sink holes, flooding, and standing water in drainage ditches have plagued residents of the River City for years.

Climate change, which scientists agree is driving increasingly powerful and frequent hurricanes, may exacerbate the problem, but it’s not the primary cause, Knight said.

“This problem we got with our infrastructure did not happen overnight, and I certainly can’t correct it in two months, but it’s my job now to correct it, so I will be working everyday as I tell the people to solve this problem,” he said.

Isabelle Taft

Sun Herald

202-768-5650

Isabelle Taft covers communities of color and racial justice issues on the Coast through Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms around the country.