Gulf Coast braces for flooding from Tropical Storm Lee

Residents of Louisiana and Mississippi hunkered down Friday for the long, slow, nasty onslaught of Tropical Storm Lee, which was puttering north toward the Gulf Coast, gaining strength and threatening to bring high winds, flooding and tornadoes to the region throughout the Labor Day weekend.

The weather system, originally classified as Tropical Depression 13, was upgraded to a tropical storm Friday afternoon once sustained winds were measured above 39 mph. It is expected to gain strength and could eventually develop into a Category 1 hurricane.

The National Hurricane Center warned that the storm could dump 10 to 15 inches of rain across southern Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, with some areas receiving 20 inches.

Photos: Tropical Storm Lee

In the New Orleans area, officials posted online a list of streets prone to flooding and put swift-water rescue teams on standby.

“It’s not a time to panic,” Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at a news conference. “It’s time to prepare for what could occur.”

The city’s levee system failed after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, putting much of the city underwater. On Monday, Katrina’s sixth anniversary, the Times-Picayune newspaper reported that an upcoming Army Corps of Engineers report would give the levee system a “near-failing grade,” despite a $10-billion post-Katrina rebuilding job.

But a prominent flood expert and member of a board overseeing part of the system said Friday he was confident the levees would hold.

The “near-failing grade” referred to predictions that the levee system, though improved, would still be overtopped in the case of a 500-year storm, which would have a 0.2% chance of occurring in any year.

Lee is simply not that kind of storm, said John M. Barry, author of “Rising Tide,” the acclaimed book about the great Mississippi flood of 1927, and vice president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East.

“There will be a lot of rainfall — a lot,” Barry said. “But that’s a very different problem than a hurricane sweeping over the levees, threatening to breach them.”

Federal officials issued a tropical storm warning covering a stretch of coast from Pascagoula, Miss., to the Sabine Pass of Texas. State officials in Louisiana and Mississippi declared states of emergency, and voluntary evacuations were ordered for some low-lying areas.

In the tiny town of Cut Off, La., an 80-minute drive southwest of New Orleans, Louis “Sturgeon” Broussard, a Lafourche Parish public works employee, said locals stopped by government offices all morning, picking up sandbags to help protect their low-lying homes.

Broussard, who has lived through numerous hurricanes, said that the slow-moving nature of this storm — “It’s just meandering” — was one of its ugliest attributes. Federal officials said it was heading northwest at a pokey 2 mph.

“Boats are coming in,” Broussard said. “Barges are coming in. They’re not taking this thing too lightly.”

Louisiana’s Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, warned that flooding was possible in coastal areas and around inland waterways. Floodgates were being closed around the region’s complex flood-protection system, and oyster harvesting areas were temporarily closed.

“We are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst,” Jindal said.

Alex Sosnowski, a senior meteorologists at AccuWeather.com, wrote Friday that the storm “has the potential to be the next billion-dollar disaster for the U.S., by way of epic flooding.”

The storm is affecting oil and gas production. By early afternoon, evacuations had taken place at 27% of the 617 manned platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

The storm also sidelined National Guard troops battling a marsh fire in eastern New Orleans, but Jindal said the storm was expected to put the fire out.

Photos: Tropical Storm Lee

richard.fausset@latimes.com