Tropical Storm Lee's Storm Surge and Louisiana

Tropical Storm Lee's storm surge begins to inundate Southeast Louisiana around 5PM Saturday, September 3, 2011. Carr Drive beach and a nearby fire department in Slidell, Louisiana are swamped by Lake Pontchartrain as Tropical Storm Lee hovers in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Within 30 minutes, this area went from virtually no presence of standing water to being entirely flooded under more than a foot of water from Lake Pontchartrain.

The president of Plaquemines parish in New Orleans, Billy Nungesser, told Fox News his biggest concern was whether the levees would hold.

"Twenty inches of rain, which is expected - we're hoping that's spread out over three days, as nowhere (here) can take that heavy rain in a concentrated timeframe," Nungesser said.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported several Louisiana parishes were distributing sandbags and issuing evacuation orders for the lowest-lying areas.

"It's not like the entire place is underwater, but certain places are," Jefferson Parish president John Young told the Los Angeles Times. "Right now, we're acting out of an abundance of caution. We don't want to have people trapped in there."

Lee was battering the Gulf Coast six years after the region was devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

The levee system around New Orleans failed after Katrina, submerging much of the city. More than 1500 people died.