MORGAN CITY, La. (AP) — Francine weakened Thursday after Louisiana hit as Category 2 hurricane Hundreds of thousands of customers lost power, a storm surge swept through coastal communities, and fears of flooding grew in New Orleans and elsewhere.

As the system moved inland, emergency crews began clearing roads and restoring power while neighborhoods and businesses began cleanup. There were no reports of deaths or injuries, Gov. Jeff Landry said.

“The human spirit is defined by its resilience, and resilience is what defines Louisiana,” Landry said at a news conference. “Certainly there are times and situations that test us, but those are also the times when we are at our best in this state.”

At the height of the storm, 450,000 people in Louisiana were without power, according to figures from the Public Service Commission. Many of the outages were due to falling debris, not building damage. At one point, about 500 people were in shelters, officials said.

“The amounts invested in resilience have really made a difference, from the number of power outages to the number of homes saved,” said Deanne Criswell, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), who attended the governor’s press conference.

The storm drenched the northern Gulf Coast. Rainfall of up to 6 inches was possible in parts of Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee and Georgia, and up to 10 inches in parts of Alabama and Florida. Flash flooding threatened cities as far away as Jackson, Mississippi, Birmingham, Alabama and Memphis, Tennessee.

Though far from the Gulf, a Memphis jury was sent home early in the trial of three former police officers accused of civil rights violations in the beating death of Tyre Nichols. U.S. District Judge Mark Norris blamed Francine’s remains and said he wanted to spare jurors from worrying about weather and distractions.

Late Thursday afternoon, the National Weather Service declared Francine a remnant low pressure system, or “post-tropical cyclone.” The center of the system was located about 90 miles south of Memphis.

In the meantime, Tropical Storm Ileana formed Thursday in the eastern Pacific Ocean, prompting authorities in Mexico to issue a tropical storm warning for the Baja California peninsula, according to the hurricane center. The storm was located about 240 miles (385 kilometers) southeast of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with top winds of 40 mph (65 kph) and moving northwest at 9 mph (15 kph).

Francine hit the coast of Louisiana in the coastal region of Terrebonne Parish on Wednesday evening with 100 mph (155 km/h) winds and damaged a fragile Coastal region that has not yet fully recovered from a series of devastating hurricanes in 2020 and 2021. The system then raced toward New Orleans, dousing the city with torrential rain. The city woke up to widespread power outages and streets covered in debris. Generators roared outside some homes.

Rushing water almost hit a pickup truck in a New Orleans underpass, trapping the driver. A 39-year-old emergency room nurse who lived nearby grabbed a hammer, waded into the waist-deep water, smashed the window and pulled the driver out. The whole thing was broadcast live on television by a WDSU news crew.

“I guess it’s just second nature, as a nurse you just go in and get it done, right?” Miles Crawford said Thursday in a telephone interview with the Associated Press. “I just had to get him out of there.”

He said the water was up to the driver’s head and continuing to rise. Crawford told the man to move to the back of the truck’s cab, where he would have more room and, since the front of the pickup was angled downward, into deeper water.

“I didn’t really wonder if I should do it – I just cared about who was going to do it,” he recalls, adding that he never caught the man’s name.

Elsewhere, news footage from coastal communities after Francine made landfall showed waves from lakes, rivers and the Gulf of Mexico crashing against levees. Water poured onto city streets in torrential rain. Trees bent in the wind.

Along Bayou Pointe-au-Chien on the coast of southern Louisiana, homes were spared the worst of the storm surge thanks to a robust system of levees and floodgates. Nevertheless, whitecaps formed in the bayou and beat against the house where Debra Matherne and her father sought shelter.

“The house started to shake and I thought, ‘Oh, I hope it stays on the pilings,'” said Matherne, 66. The damage to her house wasn’t extensive, just the screens blew out, “but it was pretty damn scary.”

Elsewhere, sheriff’s deputies helped evacuate dozens of people, including many young children, trapped by rising waters in Thibodaux on Wednesday night. Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre said sheriff’s deputies also rescued residents in Kraemer Parish.

As the sun rose in Morgan City, about 30 miles from where Francine made landfall, residents gathered tree branches strewn across their yards where water reached nearly to their doors. Pamela Miller, 54, went outside to survey the damage after a large tree fell on the roof of her home.

“It was a really loud noise, a jolt,” she said. “Luckily it didn’t go through the ceiling.”

The sixth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane seasonFrancine obtained fuel from extremely warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

In the Louisiana town of Ashland, 73-year-old Wilson Garner stood on the steps of a FEMA trailer where he has lived since his previous home was destroyed by Hurricane Ida in 2021. He has been trying for years to get enough money to renovate the old house. The $1,000 monthly rental assistance from FEMA is not enough for him to move, he said.

“Man, if you can find an apartment for $1,000, you’re lucky,” he said. “We just haven’t had any luck. Where do I go? I don’t know.”

___

Cline reported from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Associated Press writers Kevin McGill in New Orleans, Adrian Sainz in Memphis, Tennessee, Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Florida, Jeff Martin in Atlanta and Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed to this article.