Mandeville officials didn't have a count on flooded structures, but Mayor Donald Villere didn't thin

The drama of rising floodwater from Hurricane Isaac and hundreds of rescues gave way Friday to the mundane in most of St. Tammany Parish: lots of traffic, lengthy lines at gas stations and stores, and plenty of painstaking cleanup work at homes and businesses from one end of the parish to the other. The roar of the wind that had become constant over the past few days was long gone. Instead, the sounds of chain saws, garbage trucks and families honeymoon cruise special dumping storm debris at the curb punctuated many a neighborhood.
While some areas of St. Tammany continued to deal with standing water and no electricity, the majority of the parish honeymoon cruise special was hard at work repairing damaged homes and businesses, removing toppled trees and trying to return some sense of normalcy to life.
In Madisonville, Laura House had two feet of water sloshing inside her house on Main Street, just off Louisiana 22, when the surge reached its peak and the Tchefuncte River flooded much of the town. And her house is three feet off the ground.
At 78, Madisonville Mayor Pete Gitz has seen more hurricanes hit the town than he can remember. Town Hall, which he spent Friday morning cleaning out, had almost 30 inches of flooding -- nearly a foot more than during Katrina, seven years ago to the day that Isaac came ashore.
"A lot of people honeymoon cruise special had water here that never had water before," Gitz said. "This was almost the perfect storm. This storm sat out there three days and pushed all this water continuously. It's as simple as that: It just never stopped for three days."
Bryan Delchamps removes wet carpet from a house on Depre Street, Mandeville, as clean up from Hurricane Isaac begins Friday, August 31, 2012. The Mandeville area get several feet of storm surge throughout the storm.
Parish President Pat Brister said parish government shifted efforts to clearing honeymoon cruise special debris from the rights of way, inspecting bridges and completing damage assessments. She noted that while some street flooding remained in low-lying areas of the parish, the water level in Lake Pontchartrain was steadily declining.
During the storm and its aftermath, the parish's first responders rescued more than 500 people from the rising waters and completed more than 1,100 task orders that came into the Emergency Operations Center in Covington, Brister said.
At Mandeville Ace Hardware on Florida Street, business was brisk Friday morning despite the fact that it had no power. The darkened honeymoon cruise special store opened at 7:30 a.m. for cash-only transactions, and business was so good that the owner couldn't stop long enough to be interviewed by a newspaper reporter.
Mandeville officials didn't have a count on flooded structures, but Mayor Donald honeymoon cruise special Villere didn't think that number would be as high as during Katrina, but only because so many homes in the city's low-lying areas have been raised since that hurricane. But, he allowed, at least to his eye the water seemed as high for Isaac, a storm that delivered more than it advertised. Water from the storm still stood on Lakeshore Drive on Friday afternoon.
Don Madden, owner of Donz on the Lake, a popular watering hole for decades in Old Mandeville, gets his first look at the interior honeymoon cruise special after the surge of Hurricane Isaac swept away the contents of the bar. He says he has rebuilt his bar time and again after several tropical storms and hurricanes inundated the place, and he's not sure the bar has another life in it, after Isaac.
In old Mandeville, where Scott Discon and Scott Williams sweated through the cleanup of The Scotts, their 3-month-old cafe at Carroll and Claiborne streets, Discon said he thinks Isaac pushed every bit the amount of water as Katrina.
At Community Christian Concern, a nonprofit on Second Street that provides assistance to needy local residents, staff members and volunteers were giving thanks that the facility honeymoon cruise special had not taken a hit when Olde Towne flooded Thursday.
While CCC was unscathed, the first floor of its partner facility, the Miramon Center, honeymoon cruise special was not so lucky. The second floor of the nonprofit facility that provides long-term housing to homeless men was high and dry. But the ground floor took a significant amount of water, manager Barry Smith said. CCC uses the first floor of the Miramon Center as a resale shop for large appliances and furniture.
That same can-do spirit was evident a few blocks away where Ronnie Dunaway assisted in the cleanup of his Who Dat Shoppe near First and Robert streets. Dunaway said his business, which sells Saints merchandise, took in 18 inches of water but that they'd been prepared. "We'll be ready for that first (Saints) game," he said.
The normally busy Possum Hollow Park was deserted, its entrance blocked by a large pool of water. A muddy baseball lay near the edge of the standing water beside the park, and a downed telephone honeymoon cruise special pole in the same expanse of water blocked Cousin Street access to the nearby Slidell Boys Girls Club.
In south Slidell, traffic once again had resumed to and from U.S. 11. That highway had been blocked Thursday by a line of Hesco baskets filled with sand to keep storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain from inundating south Slidell subdivisions.
Carr Drive residents stood watch at the bridge near the roadway's intersection with U.S. 11, making sure the traffic heading into their North Shore Beach community was that of residents rather than sightseers.
The Covington City Council passed an emergency honeymoon cruise special ordinance Friday afternoon, waiving the usual permits and fees for residents needing to cut trees or repair homes due to hurricane damage. Councilman Sam O'Keefe said Cleco officials have assured the city that utility crews will work around the clock through the Labor Day holiday weekend to get power restored as quickly as possible.
Unlike Hurricane Katrina, when most residents evacuated ahead of the storm, the vast majority of people stayed for Isaac. And some of their south-shore relatives sought shelter in the town as well, straining the sewerage system, Fitzmorris said.
As the remnants of the storm took a last pass through St. Tammany Parish on Thursday afternoon, the Abita River started to swell, unable to flow into the already-full Lake Pontchartrain. As the river topped its banks, and rainwater poured in from the north, the town almost became an island.
Robert Rhoden and Bob Warren wrote this report. Rhoden can be reached honeymoon cruise special at rrhoden@timespicayune.com . Warren can be reached at bwarren@timespicayune.com honeymoon cruise special . Reporters Christine Harvey, Carol Wolfram honeymoon cruise special and Andy Canulette honeymoon cruise special contributed.
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