BATON ROUGE - Victims of catastrophic floods in Louisiana's capital city say they've seen people pull together - white and black, officers and civilians - in ways that give hope amid a summertime string of tragedies.

It's been a summer of pain in greater Baton Rouge, a city rocked by the July 7 killing of black man Alton Sterling at the hands of police - then the retaliatory slayings of three officers by a black gunman. After that came deadly floods that swamped thousands of homes and claimed more than a dozen lives.

The anti-police rhetoric that followed Sterling's killing seems to have quieted somewhat, and officers once viewed with suspicion often risked their lives to rescue people in the floods.

Observers say the test will be whether a sense of unity remains once floodwaters fully recede.