3:54 p.m. ET, July 13, 2019
The Coast Guard is concerned about how much rain Barry could bring
Rain pours as cars drive through a road in New Orleans, Louisiana, on Friday
SETH HERALD/AFP/Getty Images
The United States Coast Guard remains “quite concerned” about Tropical Storm Barry despite the fact that the weather event was downgraded from a hurricane.
“It remains a very dangerous storm, particularly with regards to the amount of water that could be dropped in those areas with full river basins,” Rear Admiral Paul Thomas Commander Eighth Coast Guard District said.
The Coast Guard has been preparing for Barry and has plenty of resources and staffing ready to go as the storm passes through the Gulf Coast states.
Thomas said the Coast Guard learned and implemented lessons from Hurricane Harvey, where they were not prepared nor planned for dealing with 60 inches of rain in Houston. The federal agency updated operational methods to better “track who's calling for help, where they're calling for help from, which units are closest, how we can dispatch them so we have a better common operational picture,” Thomas said.