Tina Christopher and her mother, Joyce Robinson, spent the night in their home in Morgan City, La., without power, listening to howling wind and branches falling on the roof as Hurricane Francine roared ashore just a few miles away.

”I’ll never stay for a storm again,” said Ms. Christopher, 57.

The storm, a Category 2 hurricane with 100 mile-per-hour winds when it made landfall late Wednesday, damaged buildings and caused widespread power outages in the small cities and towns that dot the swampy region southwest of New Orleans.

Fishing is among the major industries in the region, whose residents have been battered and hardened by natural disasters in recent years. Officials said the area appeared to have made it through Francine without significant damage.

“We have no reports of storm-related fatalities,” Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana said at a news conference, “and we want to keep it that way.”

More than two dozen people had to be evacuated late Wednesday in and around the town of Thibodaux, officials said, including many from a public housing complex where rising water cut off vehicle access.

With floodwaters still brimming in the streets and some main roads impassable in Lafourche Parish on Thursday morning, officials urged residents to stay home and closed many schools and offices. Flooded streets had cut off access to several roads and bridges, officials said.

In St. James Parish, about 50 miles west of New Orleans, about 90 percent of residents were without power, and a hospital was running on generators, according to the parish president, Pete Dufresne. Water levels were receding slowly, but a portion of Highway 20, a main artery, was impassable.

Officials warned residents to stay off the roads and to take care around downed lines.

Damage included downed trees and power poles, rising waters and debris in the roadways, said Shelby Mayfield, a trooper with the Louisiana State Police. One trooper was injured on Wednesday while attempting to clear debris from Interstate 10, Trooper Mayfield said, but was treated at a hospital and released.

In Morgan City, Ms. Christopher said that the water had come all the way up to her back porch before receding. The wind, she said, sounded like lions roaring.

By morning, a tree that used to shade their front yard was stripped of many of its leaves and branches, which littered the lawn. And a generator was running by the front door. It was unclear when the power would be return.

Eduardo Medina contributed reporting from Charlotte, N.C.