Louisiana residents brace as Tropical Storm Francine is expected to hit their coast as a hurricane

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Tropical Storm Francine strengthened Monday in the Gulf of Mexico and was forecast to make landfall as a hurricane this week in Louisiana, where evacuation orders were quickly issued in some coastal communities and residents began filling sandbags in preparation for heavy rains and widespread flooding.

Francine, the sixth named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, was expected to become a hurricane by Monday night or Tuesday morning, the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said. The storm was already being felt in Mexico, where drenching rains closed schools as the storm gathered strength in the Gulf.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry urged residents “not to panic, but be prepared" and heed evacuation warnings. Forecasters said Francine's landfall in south Louisiana was expected Wednesday afternoon as a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 96 to 110 mph (155-175 kph).

“We do not want people to wait to the last minute to get on the road and then run out of fuel,” Landry said. “We put a lot of information throughout the summer, throughout hurricane season, so that people can be prepared. The more prepared we are, the easier it is for us.”

Francine is taking aim at a Louisiana coastline that has yet to fully recover since hurricanes Laura and Delta decimated Lake Charles in the region in 2020, followed a year later by Hurricane Ida. Over the weekend, a 22-story building in Lake Charles that had become a symbol of storm destruction was imploded after sitting vacant for nearly four years, its windows shattered and covered in shredded tarps.

Francine's storm surge on the Louisiana coast could reach as much as 10 feet (3 meters) from Cameron to Port Fourchon and into Vermilion Bay, forecasters said.

“It’s a potential for significantly dangerous, life-threatening inundation,” said Michael Brennan, director of the hurricane center, adding it could also send “dangerous, damaging winds quite far inland."

He said landfall was likely somewhere between Sabine Pass — on the Texas-Louisiana line — and Morgan City, Louisiana, about 220 miles (350 kilometers) to the east.

Louisiana officials urged residents to immediately prepare while “conditions still allow” for it, Mike Steele, spokesperson for the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, told The Associated Press. He warned Francine could rapidly intensify.

“We always talk about how anytime something gets into the Gulf, things can change quickly, and this is a perfect example of that,” Steele said.

Residents of Baton Rouge, Louisiana's capital, began forming long lines as people filled gas tanks and stocked up on groceries. Others filled sandbags at city-operated locations to protect homes from possible flooding.

“It’s crucial that all of us take this storm very seriously and begin our preparations immediately,” Baton Rouge Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome said, urging residents to stock up on three days of food, water and essentials.

A mandatory evacuation was ordered for seven remote coastal communities by the Cameron Parish Office of Homeland Security & Emergency Preparedness. They include Holly Beach, a laid-back stretch dubbed Louisiana’s “Cajun Riviera,” where many homes sit on stilts. The storm-battered town has been a low-cost paradise for oil industry workers, families and retirees, rebuilt multiple times after past hurricanes.

In Grand Isle, Louisiana’s last inhabited barrier island, Mayor David Camardelle recommended residents evacuate and ordered a mandatory evacuation for those in recreational vehicles. Hurricane Ida decimated the city three years ago, destroying 700 homes.

Officials warn that flooding, along with high winds and power outages, is likely in the area beginning Tuesday afternoon through Thursday.

In New Orleans, Mayor LaToya Cantrell urged residents to prepare to shelter in place. “Now is the time to finalize your storm plans and prepare, not only for your families but looking out for your neighbors,” she said.

City officials said they were expecting up to 6 inches (15 centimeters) inches of rain, gusty winds and “isolated tornado activity” with the most intense weather likely to reach New Orleans on Wednesday and Thursday.

The hurricane center said late Monday afternoon that Francine was about 150 miles (245 kilometers) south-southeast of the mouth of the Rio Grande, and about 435 miles (700 kilometers) south-southwest of Cameron, with top sustained winds of about 65 miles per hour (100 kilometers per hour). It was moving north-northwest at 7 mph (11 kph).

As rain from Francine began falling Monday in northern Mexico, more than a dozen neighborhoods in Matamoros — across the border from Brownsville, Texas — flooded, forcing schools to close Monday and Tuesday. Marco Antonio Hernandez Acosta, manager of the Matamoros Water and Drainage Board, said they were waiting for Mexico's federal government to provide pumps to drain affected areas.

The storm was expected to move in north-northeast motion through Monday evening and then accelerate to the northeast beginning Tuesday before nearing the upper Texas and Louisiana coastlines Wednesday.

Stengle contributed to this report from Dallas and Alfredo Peña from Ciudad Victoria, Mexico.

Bubby Longo fills sandbags in the old Kmart/Sears parking lot ahead of Tropical Storm Francine, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, in Chalmette, La. (David Grunfeld/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Shoppers in a suburb of New Orleans gather food supplies at a grocery store, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Jack Brook)

An flag is taken down off a pole as residents prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Francine along the Louisiana coast on Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, in Lafitte, La. (Chris Granger/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

The windows of a raised historic house are boarded up as residents prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Francine along the Louisiana coast on Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, in Lafitte, La. (Chris Granger/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

James C. McKenzie, left and Kelly Blanchard cover an electronic sign with plywood ahead of Tropical Storm Francine Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, in Chalmette, La.. (David Grunfeld/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Crabbers move their traps to inside the levy protection system ahead of Tropical Storm Francine, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, in lower St. Bernard Parish, La. (David Grunfeld/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Crabbers move their traps to inside the levy protection system ahead of Tropical Storm Francine, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, in lower St. Bernard Parish, La. (David Grunfeld/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Steve Pete filled up gas containers to give to neighbors and the elderly if they need it ahead of Tropical Storm Francine in Violet, La. Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. (David Grunfeld/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Bubby Longo fills sandbags in the old Kmart/Sears parking lot ahead of Tropical Storm Francine, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, in Chalmette, La. (David Grunfeld/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Norman Bouisse, 76, left, and Jeremy Adam, back left, one of the captains for the 100-foot trawler Master Brandon, work at tying extra lines around a piling in their attempt to batten down their boat in anticipation of Hurricane Francine along the Louisiana coast in Lafitte on Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. (Chris Granger/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

St. Bernard Parish residents fill sandbags in the old Kmart/Sears parking lot ahead of Tropical Storm Francine, Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, in Chalmette, La. (David Grunfeld/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

The windows of a raised historic house are boarded up as residents prepare for the arrival of Hurricane Francine along the Louisiana coast on Monday, Sept. 9, 2024, in Lafitte, La. (Chris Granger/The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

Weather begins to form from Tropical Storm Francine on the Harrison County Beaches in Pass Christian, Miss. Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. (Hunter Dawkins/The Gazebo Gazette via AP)

Tuff Gary, left, and Morgan LeBlanc with their children Hudson, Tuff, Jr., and Zander, of Jenning, La., watch the implosion of the Hertz Tower, that was heavily damaged after Hurricanes Laura and Delta in 2020 in Lake Charles, La., Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

The Hertz Tower, which was heavily damaged after Hurricanes Laura and Delta in 2020, is imploded in Lake Charles, La., Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Weather begins to form from Tropical Storm Francine on the Harrison County Beaches in Pass Christian, Miss. Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. (Hunter Dawkins/The Gazebo Gazette via AP)

Weather begins to form from Tropical Storm Francine on the Harrison County Beaches in Pass Christian, Miss. Monday, Sept. 9, 2024. (Hunter Dawkins/The Gazebo Gazette via AP)

Tropical Storm Francine forms off Mexico, aiming for the Louisiana coast

Tropical Storm Francine forms off Mexico, aiming for the Louisiana coast

This Sunday, Sept. 8, 2024 satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows a tropical disturbance in the Gulf of Mexico expected to bring significant rainfall to parts of Texas and Louisiana this week, possibly developing into a stronger storm, including a hurricane, according to the National Weather Service. (NOAA via AP)

In the second half of the 20th century, Mexican and Mexican-American children in Marfa, Texas, were educated in an adobe-style building in classrooms that alumni describe as barracks.

They received secondhand textbooks and were paddled for speaking Spanish instead of English in a school where Latino students were segregated from Anglos by law and practice, just as whites and Blacks were separated in the South. But the principal of the Blackwell School also created an interscholastic league specifically for “Mexican schools," and alumni remembered their friends, shared laughs, and kind teachers when they gathered in Marfa on Saturday, at the start of Hispanic Heritage Month, to celebrate the Blackwell School becoming the newest national park.

At a formal ribbon-cutting ceremony for the newest national site dedicated to modern Latino history, former Blackwell students, neighbors, friends and politicians visited the original schoolhouse and a smaller building that served as the band hall. Inside, photographs, memorabilia and interpretive panels featuring quotes from former students and teachers show the imprint left by a school that once stood as an example of the racially divided education system that defined de-facto segregation in the country from 1889 to 1965.

At the ceremony, a mariachi band played exactly as the ribbon was cut. The 100 people in attendance also enjoyed a ballet folklórico performance and traditional border music of the Chihuahuan desert played by the band Primo y Beebe. Alumni also had the opportunity to write on a whiteboard what the Blackwell School meant to them.

“I am glad that it wasn't torn down,” Betty Nuñez Aguirre, a former alumni and director of the Blackwell School Alliance said. “It will show the next generation that it was not always easy for their parents or grandparents to get educated.”

Many alumni see Blackwell — first built in 1909 and closed 11 years after the landmark 1954 court decision, Brown v. Board of Education — as more than just a symbol of America's history of racial inequality. It's a symbol of Latinos triumphant over adversity.

In 2006, Joe Cabezuela, 80, was at a local restaurant celebrating the reunion of the 1960 Blackwell class. That's when he learned the Marfa Independent School District would demolish the Blackwell school. Cabezuela said he knew immediately that something had to be done to stop the demolitions, so he went straight to the superintendent’s office.

“That is not going to happen,” Cabezuela told the superintendent. “It’s part of Hispanic heritage, a history that we need to save.”

The superintendent then invited Cabezuela, founder and former president of the Blackwell School Alliance, to give a presentation to the school board on why the building needs to be preserved. Cabezuela and other alumni eventually allied and worked with a local artist on a sketch of what the preserved school should look like.

Soon after, the Marfa school board agreed to a century-long, $1 building lease to the Blackwell School Alliance, under the condition that the building would be demolished if the building's preservation stalled for more than 25 years.

Small fundraisers were started every year to pay the electricity bill, keep the water on and repair damages.

Authorized by the Blackwell School National Historic Site Act, which President Biden signed into law in October 2022, the school became an official part of the National Park system in July.

“This site is a powerful reminder of our nation’s diverse and often complex journey toward equality and justice. By honoring the legacy of Blackwell School, we recognize the resilience and contributions of the Latino community in our shared history,” Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland said in July, when the site was formally established.

Out of 429 National Park sites, only two recounted modern Latino history before Blackwell: the Cesar Chavez National Monument in California and the Chamizal National Memorial in El Paso.

Tony Cano, a member of the Blackwell School Alliance, attended the Blackwell School for three years starting in the fall of 1952. During his time there, he remembers the teachers making students write Spanish words on paper, place those papers in mini coffins out of hats or cigar boxes and bury “Mr. Spanish” in a symbolic funeral in front of the school’s flagpole.

“They were trying to get us to speak English only on campus and in the classroom,” Cano said. “A lot of kids rebelled. Once you rebelled they spanked you three times with the paddle.”

Cano said he remembers one girl who was spanked went home with bruises and did not come back to school for three days. Cano said that now that he is older he realizes, no matter what they did to them back then, “they can’t take my heritage away from me.”

From 1920 to 1947, Principal Jesse Blackwell, who is Anglo, transformed the school by creating an interscholastic league specifically for “Mexican schools,” where kids in the region could compete against each other, said historian Cristobal Lopez. For his contributions, the school first known as the Ward or Mexican School was named after Blackwell when he retired.

“He took the fundamentals and elevated that to the next level to ensure that the students, even though they were in a segregated school house, received the proper education that they needed,” said Lopez, who is a Texas field representative with the National Parks Conservation Association.

“Mexican schools, and when you look at segregated education, some of the things that stick out — the physical abuse, the emotional abuse — that did happen at Blackwell," Lopez said. "But the alumni really came together and changed the narrative and really made it into a story of resiliency, perseverance, success.”

Despite the negative associations with “Mexican schools” discouraging the Spanish language, alumni have held on to memories of teachers, their friends, small gestures and laughter.

“I think at Blackwell, they just cared so much for us,” Cano said, “even though some of us were tough to handle.”

In fifth grade, Cabezuela recalls, he and his classmates received new playground equipment when then-principal Henry Ward showed up with a duffel bag full of brand-new baseball bats. Cabezuela said it was one of his best memories while at the school.

Cabezuela said he is happy and proud that the school was able to be preserved but the best part of having the Blackwell school named a national park site is that those who walk through it are going to see their grandparents and learn more about their history.

Now, he said, “our grandkids, great-grandkids will go through that building. Even when I am gone, they’ll go there and they’ll probably see something about me and they’ll say look at granddaddy.”

The Associated Press receives financial support from the Sony Global Social Justice Fund to expand certain coverage areas. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

A Mariachi band performs during the ribbon-cutting ceremony to inaugurate Blackwell School as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

The playground of Blackwell School is pictured during its inauguration as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

A folkloric dance group performs during the inauguration of Blackwell School as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

Alumni Lionel Salgado walks the Blackwell school grounds with help from his grand daughter Sarah Madero during its inauguration as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, right, congratulates alumni Betty Nuñez Aguirre, center, and Tony Cano during the inauguration of Blackwell School as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

A display with photos of the 1957 class of the Blackwell School decorates the classroom during the inauguration day of the school as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

An old book rests on a desk of the Blackwell School classroom pictured during the school inauguration as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

The Blackwell School classroom is pictured during the school inauguration as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

From left, alumni Betty Nuñez Aguirre, musician Remigio "Primo" Carrasco, alumni Ismael Vasquez, his wife Elisa Vasquez and Gretel Enck, former president of the Blackwell School Alliance, sit at the school entrance during its inauguration as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, center left, Blackwell School alumni Joe Cabezuela, center right, National Park Service Director Chuck Sams, second from left, and NPS Intermountain Regional Director Kate Hammond, second from right, react after cutting the ribbon to inaugurate Blackwell School as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)

A Border Patrol color guard conducts the presentation of colors during the inauguration of Blackwell School as the newest National Historic Site in Marfa, Texas, Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Andres Leighton)