Louisiana residents show what the record-high flooding did to their homes

Residents in southern Louisiana started returning to their homes on Tuesday, after record flooding caused by 48 hours of torrential rain over the weekend left at least 11 people dead, 30,000 rescued, and more than 40,000 homes damaged. "I don't know we have a good handle on the number of people who are missing," Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) said Tuesday. So far, more than 60,000 people have signed up for Federal Emergency Management Agency assistance, and a total of 20 parishes are under a federal disaster declaration. The flooding is moving downstream from around Baton Rouge to lower parishes as the water makes its way toward the Gulf of Mexico.

"From a distance, the great Louisiana Flood of 2016 must seem surreal," says J.R. Ball at The Times-Picayune. But "this story, like all stories, is about people." You can watch actual people start to sort their their houses, soggy and moldy and covered with bayou silt, in this report from CNN in Denham Springs:

And this one from The Associated Press:

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"These are the devastating images of Mother Nature's wrath and the ghastly aftermath that makes us gape watching this drama unfold on television or through news and social media sites," Ball writes. "We wince. We empathize. We say we'll pray. Yet there's an uneasy detachment that comes with watching it all from afar, from somewhere other than the too many ground zeroes of this 1,000-year rain, from somewhere other than the path of destruction stretching across much of south Louisiana." Taylor Swift has donated $1 million to help the flooding victims. If you want to help, The Times-Picayune has some suggestions.