Not even a nuclear crisis can keep South Korean tourists away from Guam - The Washington Post

Guam is an ideal vacation spot for many South Koreans, and not even nuclear threats against the tropical island appear to be keeping them away.

Son Hye-ra, a Seoul office worker, is among vacationers who say they will proceed with their plans to visit. “I think the safety of these people is similar here and there,” she told the <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__news.heraldcorp.com_view.php-3Fud-3D20170811000168&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&amp;r=ms8cpeJZADV1r4YbFJz0QoQngFd9J5UehpPEBbWfEo0&amp;m=qlIRY8s6NmoBq1Lc-Di_57t_fvLSxYPz11rI8eZnrmU&amp;s=BWqkYAzh2YSsgeBPCfQNnVREV28BnR-NJbM9BqHafgs&amp;e=">Herald Business News</a>.

Travel agents in Guam and South Korea say they have fielded lots of inquiries from South Koreans, who make up about 46 percent visitors to the U.S. territory. But few have actually canceled their vacations since North Korea threatened to launch a nuclear attack against the island, the Herald Business News and Guam’s <a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.usatoday.com_story_travel_nation-2Dnow_2017_08_11_north-2Dkorean-2Dthreats-2Dalready-2Daffecting-2Dguam-2Dtourism_558410001_&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&amp;r=ms8cpeJZADV1r4YbFJz0QoQngFd9J5UehpPEBbWfEo0&amp;m=qlIRY8s6NmoBq1Lc-Di_57t_fvLSxYPz11rI8eZnrmU&amp;s=9xRGFLUKWqHH6Mr-jKNlRf03H_dwbRMNGoFbI2k7PvQ&amp;e=">Pacific Daily News</a> reported this week.

The reason may be, as Post correspondent Anna Fifield <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/08/10/south-koreans-ask-crisis-what-crisis/?utm_term=.c3f394c44ec9">reported this week</a>, that “South Koreans have become inured to the threat of North Korea — because they’ve lived in a state of war for more than six decades, and weathered regular threats and actual casualties.”

Indeed, most posts on a <a href="http://cafe.naver.com/guamfree">popular Internet community</a> for South Korean tourists to Guam lacked <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-escalates-rhetoric-on-threat-from-north-korea/2017/08/10/ff49e018-7ded-11e7-83c7-5bd5460f0d7e_story.html">“fire and fury,”</a> or even hints of panic. The top posts from this week include an advertisement for cheap WiFi for travelers and another about big discounts at Guam’s Gap, Levi and Guess outlets. Yes, there’s a statement concerning the North Korea situation. But last month’s notice about snorkel mask discounts got over 100 more comments.

The relaxed reaction from South Korean travelers is good news for Guam. Tourism is the island’s top industry, generating 60 percent of business revenue. It employs 18,000 people, comprising 30 percent of all nonfederal jobs. If Koreans suddenly started avoiding the island, particularly in the popular travel month of August, the island’s economy would be dramatically affected.

Officials from Guam’s tourism office see a bright side to the crisis. Josh Tyquiengco, marketing director at the Visitors Bureau, said the newfound attention on Guam was a chance to educate people about the small island. “The circumstances are unfortunate, but this is a good opportunity for us to educate the world about Guam and our culture, about where we are and who we are,” he said in an <a href="http://www.thejakartapost.com/travel/2017/08/11/guam-tourism-sees-silver-lining-in-north-korean-threats.html">interview with the Agence France-Presse</a>.

It wouldn’t be the first time a place got a tourism boost from a crisis. Greece, which has been in the headlines because of its ongoing economic depression and the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/greece/articles/greek-islands-unaffected-by-migrant-crisis-and-ready-for-next-su/">migrant crisis</a>, experienced <a href="http://www.tourism-review.com/greece-tourism-faces-decreasing-revenues-news5175">record tourism in 2016 and 2017</a>. The United Kingdom, after months of Brexit reporting, also saw record tourism numbers <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2017/mar/29/eu-departure-uk-sees-record-breaking-increase-in-overseas-visitors-visit-britain">this year</a>, partially because of the falling pound.

It’s all the more exceptional for little-known Guam to break into the nightly news.

Guam is a U.S. territory with a strategic military base and more than 160,000 U.S. citizens — not to mention its glorious beaches and a multicultural society. Still, few Americans know much about it. That became clear when “What is Guam?” was Googled so much this week that it became a <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%22what%20is%20guam%22&amp;src=typd">meme</a>.

Now that folks have gotten their answers from Google, perhaps Guam could have another record-breaking number of travelers. One local newspaper, t<a href="https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.postguam.com_forum_editorial_without-2Da-2Dconflict-2Dto-2Dcover-2Dshow-2Dvisiting-2Djournalists-2Dwarm-2Dside_article-5F771f319a-2D7d9b-2D11e7-2D9f2e-2D43a4c1434544.html&amp;d=DwMFaQ&amp;c=RAhzPLrCAq19eJdrcQiUVEwFYoMRqGDAXQ_puw5tYjg&amp;r=ms8cpeJZADV1r4YbFJz0QoQngFd9J5UehpPEBbWfEo0&amp;m=qlIRY8s6NmoBq1Lc-Di_57t_fvLSxYPz11rI8eZnrmU&amp;s=b-AdaK8v8SeffchU51eXfMkd-1tHYyX3EPVZuJwLfVI&amp;e=">he Guam Daily Post</a>, was even keen on convincing the hoard of visiting journalists to stick around for a “beachside barbecue.”

“These war correspondents may leave their Guam assignment with a bit of a letdown after all the hype,” the op-ed board suggested Friday. “But … hopefully they’ll be back as vacation guests.”

<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/08/10/south-koreans-ask-crisis-what-crisis/?utm_term=.7c69013fadf5">South Koreans ask: Crisis? What crisis?</a>

Rachel Premack covered business for The Washington Post. She left The Post in August 2016. 

Rachel Premack

The Washington Post

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Why Korean companies are forcing their workers to go by English names - The Washington Post

SEOUL — Hwang Yun-ik would never think to call his co-workers or boss by their first names. Most Koreans wouldn't.

For Hwang, that changed recently. Kakao, one of South Korea’s largest Internet companies, decided three years ago that all employees would go by English nicknames. Hwang works at Kakao as a director in business development.

The strange part wasn’t being called an English name. It was being called, well, a name.

The norm in South Korea is to call your colleagues or superiors not by their given names but by their positions. It’s the same for addressing your older friends or siblings, your teacher or any person on the street. So if your family name is Johnson and you were to be hired in a Korean company as a manager, your co-workers would call you “Johnson-boojang.” To get the attention of your older female friend, you would call for “eunni,” or “older sister.”

This is a language where verb conjugations are based not on I, they, we and so on, but on formality levels. “The younger person must use honorific to the older person,” Hwang said. “If not, that makes a lot of conflict.”

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One popular Korean blog was more explicit on shirking honorifics in the workplace: “Dropping your pants and [urinating] in the person’s briefcase would be only a little ruder than calling him/her by his/her first name.”

But some companies are looking to eliminate some of this hierarchy. The best way to do that, it seems, is dictating that employees take English names. Using the actual name of your boss or co-workers feels impolite. But, hopefully, calling him or her an English nickname taps into a different cultural mind-set.

That has ushered Koreans to take on typical English names such as Sophie or John. Or, in Hwang’s case, atypical ones: He chose “Unique.”

Why Unique? He responded simply and with a smile, “I am unique.”

Unique has embraced English nicknames, though folks elsewhere feel uneasy about it. Hwang Hye-rim, who previously worked at a translation company, said she always attached position names to her co-workers’ English names. “I was concerned that omitting job position names would be really offensive,” she said.

Hong Yun-ji likes the lack of hierarchy at the Seoul office of SABIC, a Saudi manufacturing company. But, in an office full of Esthers and Michelles, she stuck with Yun-ji.

“I prefer to use my Korean name because I am a Korean person,” Hong said between sips of an iced coffee at a stylish cafe in Seoul one recent Saturday. “Using an English name even though you are not American is a little bit strange. Your name is from your own mother and father.”

Companies in English education, tourism, trade or other globally focused industries typically have English nickname policies. They want to accommodate foreign business partners who can’t decipher between Lee Ji-yeong and Lee Ji-yeon. “They’re thoughtful people,” Hong said. “It’s to be kind to foreign people.”

She added with a laugh, “It’s too thoughtful thinking sometimes.”

The larger reason is a desire for a horizontal workplace as more employees, particularly younger ones, are educated or work outside Korea. “Younger generations think something’s wrong with it, and we all feel the need to fix this culture,” Hwang Hye-rim said.

In the hierarchical structure, employees cannot follow or share their own ideas. Decision-making is usually stymied by going through many chains of hierarchy. And projects are not necessarily led by expertise but by who has the highest title.

“ ‘You should, you must follow my commands over your own thinking,’ ” Hong said. “It’s like they’re soldiers. They are not working together.”

While start-ups such as Kakao have rejected that quasi-military structure, it’s protected at chaebol — the massive, family-owned companies such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai that essentially run ­Korea. Samsung alone accounts for one-fifth of Korea’s gross domestic product.

Chaebol are infamously rigid, as are the many Korean companies made in their image. People receive raises and promotions on the same schedule, according to age; desks are arranged according to position; and hiring occurs no more than twice a year, often according to test scores. It’s comfortingly logical.

So when a company instills English nicknames along with a more horizontal culture, it is removing the backbone of an organization.

Many Koreans, who often work 12-hour days at a single company for most of their lives, feel that their life identity is taken, as well.

“At first, we felt emotionally deprived,” one employee at SK Telecom, which removed most job titles in 2006, told the New York Times in 2008.

Younger Koreans and foreign workers hoping for a quicker overhaul of the hierarchical office are likely to be disappointed. This country spends more time at work than nearly any other country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — on average every year, 323 hours more than Americans and 394 hours more than the Japanese. There’s little reason to want to be called “Fred” or “Sally” rather than the “director” title you have dedicated your life to achieving.

Even Hong, who lived in Canada and dislikes many of Korea’s Confucian aspects, still accidentally calls her boss by the traditional title.

“Sometimes it comes out,” Hong said. “It’s a foreign company, but the people working there are totally Korean. They never discard their own essential personality.”


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Summer Fun in Rehoboth Beach, Deleware

Rehoboth Beach hasn’t changed much over time. That’s what vacationers count on. - The Washington Post

A Washingtonian’s summer vacation looks like this, and it basically has not changed in 40 years:

You pile in the Subaru, drive 2½ hours (or four, depending on how well you timed your departure), and you’re in a place like Rehoboth Beach, Del., a town of 1,300 that swells to 60,000 some weekends. There, you hit the beach, eat pizza at one of the local joints, go back to the beach. Then you head to your rental for a shower and some balm for the sunburn. Then out for some crab cakes and a boardwalk stroll. Then it’s time for bed. It goes on like that for a week, punctuated by stops for ice cream, caramel popcorn and salty fries. Then you pile the folding chairs and boogie boards back in the car and head home.

The laid-back, traditional and even kitsch getaway couldn’t be more different from the world many of these vacationers leave, the urban landscape with hipster-foodie hot spots, coffee shops to fuel long workdays and commuter-clogged streets.

Like a lot of beach towns, “Slower Lower Delaware” seems to relish its ability to resist change.

On a recent Saturday afternoon, Chip Hearn, who owns the popular Ice Cream Store off the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk, chatted with a regular sporting a University of Richmond shirt. Afterward, he declared, “Now, there’s a perfect sign of Rehoboth Beach.”

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REHOBOTH BEACH ECONOMY

“That guy, he’s a multi-skidillionaire,” said Hearn, who was wearing a Hawaiian shirt. “Did he look like it? Did he act like it? Was there any pretension? No.”

Rehoboth Beach’s year-round population has hovered around 1,500 since the 1940s, according to census data. The businesses here have not changed much over the decades, either. Locals will point out a shop called Browseabout Books, established in 1975, and three pizzerias that have divided pizza-eaters here for years (Louie’s, Grotto and Nicola, which Hearn calls the “big three”). There’s the 31-year-old Beach Arcade and 55-year-old Funland, an amusement park. Hearn founded the Ice Cream Store in the mid-’70s after selling Italian ice on the boardwalk in high school. Dolle’s taffy store dates to 1910.

People’s identities are tied to these places. “I grew up eating Louie’s pizza, and I judge every slice of pizza on that,” said Beach Arcade manager Matt Weiner, whose father founded the arcade.

Weiner said the folks who vacation here view trips to his arcade, and most everywhere else in Rehoboth Beach, as a tradition. They look forward to the familiar.

“Every year, they like coming back and doing that same traditional thing they like and reliving the memories from previous years,” Weiner said. “A family — we have this elephant kids’ ride — and they send me a picture of their kids every year on the ride from the time they were, like, 3 years old. Now they’re, like, 26.”

When people come to Rehoboth Beach, they want nostalgia. That’s a key reason foodie trends like cold-brew coffee, fusion food and fancy drinks in Mason jars aren’t really seen there.

Businesses like that try to open every summer but usually fail quickly. There’s a lot of turnover in Rehoboth Beach, Hearn said.

“Every year, more and more ice cream places open, and every year, three of them close,” Hearn said. “Last year, it was crepes. This year, it’s juice bars. Four to five of them have opened, and they won’t be here next year.”

Charlie Browne, a lawyer and Rehoboth Beach resident, offered another explanation between bites of his salad during a recent Sunday brunch at Back Porch Cafe, a 42-year-old restaurant.

“I think it’s hard for businesses to make it here that are rental,” Browne said. “A fairly small number of people own the majority of the businesses here, and they’ve probably bought the real estate a long time ago.”

Browne presides over the Rehoboth Beach Homeowners’ Association. He said many business open only to get hit with a rent hike the next year; there’s a lot of demand for spaces near the beach, and little open land.

“There’s a little bakery up by the library, and I hear they’re closing,” Browne said. “The health food store next to it closed because the landlord, he decided he wanted to do something else.”

As a result, the commercial district here is always changing and never changing. Certain buildings seem to perpetually house businesses hoping to serve the trend du jour. This year, it is the Twist Juice Bar and Dreamer Coffee and Juice Bar.

Lisa Young, manager at the Ice Cream Store, eyed the store next to her before her shift one Saturday night. “This place next door to us has probably been five different places in the 20 years I’ve worked here,” she said.

Allen Fasnacht, part of the founding family of Funland, noted that his park is in its fifth generation. His 7-year-old great-granddaughter is restocking prizes. The rest, he said with a smile, are ride testers.

Said Fasnacht of Rehoboth Beach’s appeal, “Its popularity can be traced to nostalgia.”

Fasnacht helped found the place in 1962, but on a recent Sunday, he was doing trash duty. The 87-year-old works almost every day. When he’s not at Funland, he said, “I sit upstairs and twiddle my thumbs and wish I was workin’.”

Sharon Lynn, city manager of Rehoboth Beach, said the local government enacts a slew of ordinances and codes every year to maintain the community’s “seaside charm.”

“A lot of diligent work on the part of the mayor, the commissioners and the city staff make Rehoboth Beach this very special, charming place,” Lynn said. “It’s a lot of effort to do these things, and sometimes, it’s not a popular thing.”

One example is the pool ordinance. In June 2015, the city discussed banning the use of pools at rental home properties. They fretted becoming like nearby Dewey Beach or Ocean City, where partying 20-somethings hoot and holler during week-long drinking binges.

More than 100 people showed up for a City Hall meeting sporting matching T-shirts that read “Save Our Nation’s Summer Capital.” After months of debate, voters agreed to put a halt on building summer pools.

A slew of other ordinances have shaped what Rehoboth Beach is today. Most pertinent, the city voted in the mid-1990s to limit the number of high-rises. A few such condos house vacationers, but the skyline has otherwise remained low. Residents voted to ban smoking on the boardwalk two years ago, and you can’t drink on the beach.

Upon hiring Lynn in 2014, Rehoboth Beach Mayor Samuel R. Cooper saidthat “we weren’t looking for somebody to change things.”

The plan seems to have worked. Locals were hard-pressed to think of how the city has changed.

“Gosh, I really don’t know,” said Young, who moved to Rehoboth Beach at 13 from central Pennsylvania. “To me, it kind of seems the same. There are new business every year, but otherwise, it’s just about coming down to the beach and eating and having fun.”

This is what happens to half of Australia’s baby formula - The Washington Post

Meet Lydia. She has long bangs, a warm smile and is Chinese-Australian. You may have seen photos of her on Alibaba’s Taobao, a sort of Chinese fusion of Amazon and eBay, examining the baby formula selection in Australian supermarkets and stocking grocery carts with cans.

Lydia is a top seller of baby formula, but Chinese-Australians like her have raised ire in both countries. (Credit: Screen capture)

That’s because she's a full-time shopper, or "daigou," for Chinese people eager to buy foreign goods that are too pricey or nonexistent in China. And infant formula is her specialty.

Australian formula is much cheaper than the Chinese product. Chinese moms also trust it more. As a result, 27 percent of Chinese say they've purchased baby formula online, according to a Nielsen report.

Half of Australia's formula sold at retail goes to China through consumer-to-consumer channels, the Sydney Morning Herald <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/half-baby-formula-bought-from-aussie-supermarkets-being-sent-overseas-20151214-glnmd2.html">revealed last year</a>, with Chinese demand for the product accounting for more than $200 million in sales in 2015.

[China’s hunger for baby formula feeds underground market in Australia]

Not everyone is pleased about that. Some Australians are unhappy that their supermarkets' shelves are being emptied for what some call "smuggling" purposes, and the Chinese government says it is being deprived of tax revenue on the product.

But analysts don't expect either recently imposed Chinese tariffs or a backlash among Australian consumers to stop the daigou or diminish the Chinese public's demand for foreign goods.

“Chinese people have more money to spend, and they are really scared of the safety of Chinese products,” said Tim Foulds, head of research at Euromonitor Australia and New Zealand. “This is particularly apparent when you’re trying to care for your baby.”

Chinese consumers' concerns about domestic baby formula dates to 2008, when a number of Chinese dairy companies were found to be selling formula contaminated with toxic melamine. Some 300,000 babies were sickened, with 54,000 hospitalized. Six died.

The scandal was one of the worst in a line of scares: 100 tons of retail oil recycled from restaurant gutters seized in 2011; 850 children poisoned by pollution from a lead plant in provincial China; and most recently, a Beijing elementary school's running track found to have used toxic waste <a href="http://phys.org/news/2016-06-china-factories-toxic-school-tracks.html">in June</a>.

Among the responses of the country's growing middle class has been the turn to foreign goods — especially those from Australia and New Zealand, whose producers emphasize purity, health and the quality of their farms, as in this commercial by the a2 Milk Co.:

The importance of that trust issue is reflected in Lydia's Taobao account. Her profile describes how she came to Brisbane, Australia, as a student in 2010 and opened her account with the website in 2013, managing the business with her boyfriend. A collage of Aussie amusement parks, beaches and skylines also shows images of shipping and packing and shopping aisles in Woolworth's.

Lydia's profile shows, written in Chinese in the middle, 

Every posting for a shipment of baby formula includes documentation of the shopping trip: photos of Lydia holding formula cans; the formula being scanned by an unsuspecting grocery store employee; and, most important, the receipts. That provides definitive proof that the formula the Chinese consumer is buying was indeed purchased at a trustworthy Aussie chain. The profile emphasizes that each shipment comes with one.

“In Australia, when we buy something like baby formula, we take for granted that what we’re buying is what the product is going to be, but in China, all the trust is gone,” Ben Sun of Think China, a Sydney-based marketing agency, told news.com.au <a href="http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/empty-tin-sales-a-new-low-in-baby-formula-saga/news-story/b269717700fa9128470803cb34363705">in January</a>.

Some Taobao users are even more thorough than Lydia. It’s common for daigou to include photos of their credit cards, Australian passports, Costco memberships, Woolworths reward cards and even firearms licenses. Sellers will upload tax invoices followed by dozens of pictures of themselves surrounded by boxes full of baby formula ready to be shipped to China. Then come baby formula advertisements in Chinese, dotted with images of cows roaming Australian pastures and plump white babies.

Qian, a Taobao Gold Medal Seller, takes it even further: She promises each customer a video showing her shopping for the formula.

Qin shows herself shopping in Australia. Daigous post photos like these to build trust among their clients. (Credit: Screen capture)

Infant-formula daigou can earn an entire income off the practice — and at least some serious cash. Experts call it a gray market. “It’s not illegal,” Foulds said. “People are buying these products legally on the Australian market, they’re paying taxes on it, so it's just like anyone else buying them. They’re not illegally being exported to China, although the Chinese government has tightened the actions around that.”

The practice is also represents valuable profits for distributors and manufacturers, Milk Powder Australia chief executive Simon Hansford told news.co.au <a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/northern-territory/parents-outraged-as-chemist-warehouse-buys-into-chinese-baby-formula-racket/news-story/22f5a246da76f6bc2fc4c62c5edb7527">in September</a>. Hansford's company has "specialized in the manufacturing of infant formula for the discerning Chinese market" since 2009, according to its website.

Infant formula sales at Australian supermarkets <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/business/half-baby-formula-bought-from-aussie-supermarkets-being-sent-overseas-20151214-glnmd2.html">have nearly doubled</a> since 2012, which experts attribute to the rise in daigou activity.

“Companies like [baby-food makers] Bellamy’s, a2, Swisse and Blackmores are absolutely cleaning up," Hansford told news.co.au. "All the stuff going off the shelves in Woolies and Coles is going straight overseas.”

The daigou trade is "happening everywhere at the moment," Hansford added. "It’s a real movement.”

If you're looking on Taobao for baby formula, this is what your search results might look like. (Credit: Screen capture)

But many are angry. In Australia, Foulds said, the “tabloid media” have expressed outrage at the trend. Parents have described the frustration of <a href="http://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/parents-outraged-as-chemist-warehouse-buys-into-chinese-baby-formula-racket/news-story/45a8d54dd88ae7bc1fa9f780ff3549aa">empty shelves</a>, with some telling news.co.au in January that they might go to four different outlets before finding formula.

This daigou shows every step of the distribution process. (Screen capture)

Stores have imposed rationing — restricting purchases to from two to eight per customer — but the limits have not been enforced nationwide. A Woolworth’s executive told Australia’s Fairfax Media in December that the company had given up enforcement, saying: "Sales are worth way too much for us. . . . We know more than half the sales are gray market and turn a blind eye."

The Chinese government, meanwhile, has been trying to crack down on the practice for years, most recently in April, when a tariff of 11.9 percent was placed on products sold on websites and shipped from overseas to China.

As for daigou who choose to lug baby formula back home in person, it’s becoming customary for them to declare how much they're bringing in — or else face a fine.

Along with its perceived purity, formula is far cheaper in Australia. A Euromonitor analysis shows that formula is more than twice as expensive in China for a typical can weighing around 1.8 pounds. Australian formula costs just under $20 in Australia, while the same brands average $48 in China. Even domestic Chinese brands cost $46.

Sales of baby formula have grown in China by double digits since at least 2001, according to Euromonitor. That contrasts with the trend in Western countries, where mothers increasingly prefer breast-feeding.

Economic Policy

U.S. Policy

A ‘horror movie’: Fast-rising floodwaters in Louisiana spark a state of emergency - The Washington Post

Torrential rains have caused massive flooding in rivers and creeks in states along the Gulf Coast this weekend, leaving at least two people dead and a trail of damage. More than 1,000 have been rescued in Louisiana from the fast-rising waters, found in homes, cars and even clinging to trees.

The rains are expected to continue, sweeping westward into Texas. Gov. John Bel Edwards (D) declared a state of emergency in Louisiana on Friday, and many of the state’s parishes have urged their residents to evacuate.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) has declared states of emergency in several counties, mostly in the southern region of the state. The National Weather Service declared a flash-flood watch on Saturday afternoon in Deep East Texas.

But the rains appeared to be most destructive in Louisiana. Records were handily broken throughout the state in what Edwards called a “truly historic” weather event. Baton Rouge received two months’ worth of rain <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/13/us/louisiana-flooding/">in one day</a>, CNN meteorologist Derek Van Dam said. On average, 5.82 inches of rain falls in August, and twice that fell in Louisiana’s capital in a 24-hour period. Some rainfall totals have exceeded 20 inches.

Edwards said that he was not sure how much worse the flooding would become. “This is unprecedented, so we don’t have records where we can go back and see who all is going to be impacted,” Edwards said at a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpit4t142n4">news conference</a> on Saturday morning.

“It’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better,” Weather Channel meteorologist Tom Moore <a href="https://weather.com/news/weather/news/gulf-coast-flooding-latest-news">said Saturday morning</a>.

Two have died in Louisiana, multiple news outlets have reported. William Mayfield, 68, slipped and drowned in a flooded ditch near Baton Rouge on Friday. Fifteen miles south of the Mississippi border, the body of a 50-something man was found Friday evening in a submerged pickup on Louisiana Highway 10.

Several residents said it’s the worst flooding they’ve seen in their life. Even the Louisiana governor and his wife had to evacuate — their basement is deluged.

Rachel Premack

Washington, D.C.

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