Water rose from the Delcambre Canal and covered stretches of Richard Street and much of the rest of the town of Delcambre Wednesday night and Thursday morning, but not to the height projected by forecasters in the wake of Hurricane Laura.

DELCAMBRE — Don Guidry is like most of the people in Delcambre. Unlike meteorologists, they immediately compare and rank storms based on their memory of the events.

“This was worse than Barry,” Guidry said Thursday morning, looking out over the town’s flooded Shrimp Festival grounds. “Worse than Barry, for sure. That was nothing. It’s not as bad as RIta was, though.”

The town’s residents are used to having water come up over the docks from the Delcambre Canal, a short waterway linking the town to Vermilion Bay and the Gulf of Mexico. But Laura’s rain and storm surge pushed water up the channel, spilling it over Richard Street and flooding a large portion of the town, with the rail line and highway bisecting the two flooded halves of the town of 1,800.

The drawbridge that marks the town’s eastern boundary on Highway 14 usually has enough space under it for small boats and skiffs to pass underneath without it being raised. On Thursday morning, the waters in the channel were lapping against it.

Like many residents in the flood-prone area, Guidry had raised the ground under his home, building up the earth to create a “turtleback” to keep his mobile home from flooding.

“My house looks like an island now,” he said. “We spent the night in the trailer, and it was rocking. Thank God we were facing the right way so the wind went past us. If it was sideways, then we’d really be rocking.”

The surge, however, was less than he said forecasters were warning about.

“They were saying 10, 15 feet,” Guidry said. “I think we got 4 or 5.”

Another resident, John Trahan, stopped his truck so he could shoot video of the canal rising to meet the bridge. Like Guidry, he had raised his home above the flood level.

“We’re good,” he said. “We’re high and dry, for now. Never say never, but so far we are ok.”

His brother, he said, lived on the other side of the railway’s accidental dike.

“My brother lives on the north side,” Trahan said. “I’m worried about him, but I think they have a lot of space left, so they’ll be ok.”

As he shot video of the water rapidly passing under the span, he noted how high it had gotten in a few short hours.

“It’s almost time to open the bridge,” he said. “The problem with that is, you open the bridge you close the road.”

But even with the waters racing past, he said the town was designed to bounce back from the inundation.

“Right now, people are good,” he said. “If it goes up another foot, they’re still good. After that, no.”

As for Guidry, who has spent the better part of the last three decades working on boats and offshore, Thursday was just another day as long as Laura was done and the sun was out.

“I passed Hurricane Juan out in the Gulf, while I was on a 90-foot utility boat” Guidry said. “So when I see this, a lot of people start panicking. Me, I’m used to it. I’d rather be on land dealing with this than offshore.”