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Last night and into the early morning hours, the Terrebonne parish area received between 4-8″ of rain over a five hour period. The area came under a Flash Flood Warning at approximately 2:30 a.m. on Friday.
Drainage ditches, streets and eventually some yards filled with rising water as the parish pumps raced to alleviate the deluge of water falling.
Director of Public Works David Rome and his crew spend the night in the field, watching pumps and working to make sure everything was running as excepted. Roads and Bridges was also called out to help clean out trench basins and culverts.
“Our pumps actually kicked on before the heavy rain started here in Houma, in particular our large pumps off of Coteau Road and Hwy 182,” shared Rome. “All of our pumps were functioning and performed very well. All major pump stations are on telemetry which allows us to monitor and control remotely. Those stations not on telemetry operate off of float sensors that detect a preset start elevations. These start elevations are set by the Army Corps of Engineers.”
Rome further explained, “We have to consider this front was not a system that just quickly passed through. It kind of meandered around to our north, over Thibodaux and Vacherie, slowly moved our way and then sat over us as the rain fell. The entire time is wasn’t raining here, our waterways, especially Bayou Terrebonne, Ouiski Bayou and Bayou Cane, were filling up because all the arteries drain to Thibodaux then south. Once the rain actually reached us, there wasn’t much retention left to hold the water.”
To put the amount of rainfall we received in a short period of time into perspective, for Tropical Storm Olga in October of last year when our area experienced major flooding, we had about 11 inches of rain of the course of eight hours. During Olga, Bayou Terrebonne at the Bonanza pump station got up to 11 feet. On average, its at about 4.5 feet. Last night, we saw the water levels get up to 9.8 feet.
Rome did share that he knew of 10-12 confirmed areas where residents received water in their homes, along with a few businesses along Bayou Terrebonne.
