Hurricane Francine hit Louisiana as a Category 2 storm Wednesday, leaving almost 400,000 homes without power and causing major flooding in New Orleans and other areas. Miles Crawford, an ER nurse at the city's University Medical Center, rescued a man who had driven his pickup trick into floodwaters and was stuck under a rail bridge, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reports. He grabbed a hammer from his home, waded into the water, broke the truck's back window, and pulled out the driver, who was in water up to his chin. Crawford told WDSU, which captured video of the rescue, that his training as a nurse helped him stay calm. "I'm used to high stress ... on a daily basis," he said.
In Louisiana's Lafourche Parish, the sheriff's office said deputies rescued 26 people from flooded homes, CNN reports. Francine quickly weakened to a tropical storm after making landfall, but the National Hurricane Center warned that it remained dangerous, NBC News reports. "There is a danger of life-threatening storm surge during the next several hours for portions of the eastern Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines, where a Storm Surge Warning remains in effect," the center said in an update at 5am Eastern.
The NHC predicted that Francine would be downgraded to a tropical depression as the storm moved north into Mississippi on Thursday, the AP reports. It warned that heavy rain could cause flash flooding in cities including Jackson, Birmingham, Memphis, and Atlanta. (More Hurricane Francine stories.)
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