Dozens rescued from flooding in coastal Mississippi

Members of the Swift Water Rescue Team rescue stranded employees of WQRZ radio station in the Shoreline Park area of Bay St. Louis, Miss., during Hurricane Isaac on Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012. Isaac was packing 80 mph winds, making it a Category 1 hurricane. It came ashore early Tuesday near the mouth of the Mississippi River, driving a wall of water nearly 11 feet high inland and soaking a neck of land that stretches into the Gulf.

Photo by Associated Press /Chattanooga Times Free Press.

PEARLINGTON, Miss. — Mississippi wildlife officers used small motorboats Wednesday to rescue several people from a neighborhood that Isaac flooded in the small coastal town of Pearlington.

One of those rescued, 63-year-old Dianne Burton, says she and members of her extended family didn’t leave before the storm because they didn’t expect so much water. She has lived there 46 years and says the only other time the area flooded was during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said Wednesday afternoon that officers from the state Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks had rescued at least 58 people in Hancock County.

But the rescue of Burton and her family was happening at the same time Bryant was doing a press briefing in Gulfport, so the total of those rescued will be higher.