Mid-South crews help in areas heavily impacted by Hurricane Laura

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - Mid-South emergency relief crews offered support in Louisiana where Hurricane Laura landed Thursday.

“It came through as a Category 4. My team here in Baton Rouge, we only got some wind and a little bit of rain but it was not intense,” said Marie Normandie with the Memphis Corp of Engineers.

She is with a team of 13 people stationed in Baton Rouge and prepared to provide temporary emergency power with generators.

“I’ve done Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Issac, Hurricane Sandy and both Irma and Maria so this is Hurricane No. 6 for me,” said Normandie.

It appears Hurricane Laura has done minimum damage in terms of power outages there in Baton Rouge and the same can be said for the storm surge

The Mississippi Urban Search and Rescue team which includes five people from North Mississippi, was deployed to Baton Rouge as well but flooding wasn’t as bad as expected.

Tennessee Task Force 1 was deployed to Scott, Louisiana, but according to their Facebook page, the team has now gone to hard-hit Lake Charles, Louisiana.

In Shelby County, the Office of Emergency Homeland Security is not expected to need to open their emergency operation center.

But they are expecting a couple of inches of rain and high winds.

“Well power outages of course and we tell everyone to make sure they’ve got a lot of batteries and make sure they invest in a weather radio and they pay attention to all of the warnings,” said Charles Newell, Shelby County Office of Emergency Homeland Security.

Meanwhile, local crews have been cleaning debris from ditches and inlets to prevent flooding.

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