Lafourche, Champagne prepared for storms

Lafourche Parish is staying the course and making small additions to its hurricane response plan this year.

Josh Champagne, a Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office veteran, is now in his second year, and second hurricane season, leading Lafourche’s Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness department. Champagne, who spent his first year in office setting up his own evacuation plan for the parish and verifying plans and contacts, said Lafourche’s storm plan is not changing much from last year. He said his second year has been about tying up any loose ends to make sure the plan is ready for live action, which Lafourche has had a small taste of recently with strong rains battering the parish over the last few weeks.

“I think all our parish leaders, from our law enforcement, our emergency responders to our school system, everybody’s kind of on the same page and agreeing to the same methods. I think we’re good to go. We hope that our citizens will take the message we deliver and put it in place when we request it,” Champagne said.

This year’s hurricane season may yet be the time for Champagne and the parish to fully institute that plan, although experts are looking at a relatively tame season. Climatologists at Colorado State University, looking at more than 60 years of historical data, predicted a slightly below-average 2017 Atlantic hurricane season due to the possible development of a weak to moderate El Niño and anomalous Atlantic Ocean cooling. CSU is predicting 11 named storms, with four of those becoming hurricanes and two reaching at least Category 3 at some point. The numbers are all at or below the median figures for 1981-2010 and are below last year’s estimation, when CSU experts predicted 13 storms, six hurricanes and two major hurricanes.

According to Champagne, multiple government agencies in Lafourche have been handling preventive work ahead of time. Champagne said the work done by other agencies beforehand makes the actual storm response process go much smoother.

“Our public works people have been really working to clean out canals. Our levee districts have been working hard throughout the year to reinforce levees and add to them,” Champagne said. “Our plan is pretty much the same as we had last year: educating our people on getting a plan and putting their stuff together and finding that location they want to evacuate to in event we have to do an evacuation.”

Champagne was an emergency responder with the LPSO during Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, and he led search and rescue teams in New Orleans and Lake Charles once Lafourche was stabilized. He said the parish has retained its memorandum of understanding with Monroe from last year, in which Monroe has agreed to provide public shelter for evacuated residents from Lafourche, if needed. Champagne said the MOU with Monroe is due to last until the end of Parish President Jimmy Cantrelle’s term, unless either of the parties wishes to leave the agreement, which he does not see happening. Champagne said he has also been in meetings with state officials at the Governor’s Office for Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness and local officials from the region to make sure everybody is on the same page when a crisis hits.

Champagne said such evacuations to Monroe will be handled by the local company in charge of school bus transportation, but families should have their own evacuation plans locked in by this point, with practice making perfect on a quick departure.

“If you have family members in another part of the state, map out a location getting there. Get all your important documents, copies made and things of that nature, things you would want to take with you, and basically put together you’re ‘go’ bag,” Champagne said. “At the end of the day, when it’s time to go, you have everything ready to go, all your vital documents and things that can keep you moving forward during this time of impact.”

Lafourche officials have spoken about setting up a database of residents for response streamlining during storm events. Residents would be asked to voluntarily sign up to list their address and state whether they plan on evacuating or not. According to Champagne, this would help in rescues after a storm passes, as responders would know which homes are occupied and which are already evacuated. Champagne said the parish’s information technology people are working on the database and “cleaning a couple little things up,” with the parish hopefully bringing the system live soon.

“We want to make sure everybody gets out of here. Our message is we want everybody to evacuate in the event we have a severe storm coming. But if there’s going to be a possibility of people staying we want to try to identify where they’re at,” Champagne said. “That way we can get resources to them in the event we can get those resources to them post-impact.”

Hurricane Guide