this morning, communications commission has worked with the cellular providers to initiate their cooperative framework agreement. that agreement allows customers with one provider to go to another provider if that provider is down. so, it allows customers to use roaming access carriers that are up and running. and that means you should be able to get a signal, no matter who your carrier was or is. the main thing i want to make clear to all of you is we re providing any help that you re going to need. let s go 30 miles west of new orleans. search boats and helicopters are out there trying to rescue people trapped in their homes. cnn s ed lavandera is there for us. ed, what are you seeing? reporter: alisyn, we ve been here on highway 51 in laplace,
0 get him to the island and as long as there s communication, we ll be able to communicate with him and see what s going on there. but it s very hard to not have any word from that island and the people on it since that time. in lafite, the water was very high. our first responders, the sheriff, firefighters, louisiana national guard, some coast guard are there doing search and rescue. they re having to get boats in and out. we are sheltering those people at a playground and then i believe the state is going to coordinate, governor, for a pickup and move them out to alexandria is my understanding. and then of course our systems are down. we have no electricity, no communication. our water systems are down. we re losing pressure. we had to do a boil water advisory. our sewer system, as you know, is based on electricity, so we re going to start having back-ups there, so that s going to be a hygiene problem, and we re encouraging residents who are out of the area to stay out because we do