Thibodaux Regional Medical Center’s North Hospital project complete
October 20, 2006“We never really got a chance to step down from Katrina,” Lafourche Fire District #3 Fire Chief Freddy Guidry said. “We treated them both like they were one storm.”
When Rita began stirring in the Gulf just two weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated most of southeast Louisiana, many residents of Lafourche Parish have already left town. They either had not yet returned from evacuating for Katrina or had left because most homes and businesses were still without power.
The folks that were here were hard at work keeping the parish safe and crossing their fingers that Rita would not have the same devastation as Katrina.
“We went into emergency operations on (Sept. 22),” Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office Public Information Officer Larry Weidel remembers. “We were basically still very active, and lot of people were deployed through the southern region from Katrina at that time.”
Sheriff’s deputies were working double shifts and intensely patrolling homes and businesses of evacuated residents for looters, in reaction to a mandatory evacuation called for all areas south of the Intercoastal Canal.
The Category 5 intensity that Rita carried while in the gulf created a storm surge that had rarely been seen before, 20-30 feet above normal tide levels.
The parish’s first responders had already been tested to their limits once. Could they survive another damaging storm?
Rita unloads on Lafourche
The effects of Katrina were measured mostly in wind damage. The effects of Rita were measured mostly water damage. Flooding and the power outages and communication problems that resulted seemed to be the biggest obstacles against getting the parish back to working order.
“My Leeville station had about four foot of water in it,” Lafourche Fire District #3 Fire Chief Freddy Guidry said. “It came up so fast we did not have enough time to get the truck out, so it had lot of damage to it.”
The record storm surge flooded parish road up to the Leon Theriot Floodgate in Golden Meadow. There was also sporadic flooding in areas protected by the parish levee.
“Most of my volunteers evacuate, and I am left with 12 people to handle things, mostly my paid staff,” Guidry said. “That is 12 people to handle 52 percent of Lafourche Parish getting 10 or 12 calls a day. With that call volume we got very little rest. I doubt we got four hours of sleep for the first three days.”
Even with a shortage for first responders in the area, other parishes where in worse shape than Lafourche. Emergency workers from the parish stepped up and went to help in heavy hit areas.
“After Rita we deployed people to Vermillion, Jefferson Davis and Calcasieu parishes to assist,” Weidel said. “I personally assisted transporting two units to Vermillion parish because they has lost several of their police cars.”
Property casualties from both storms, which in most cases could only be calculated after Rita, left the parish with much to rebuild.
Port Fourchon reported $40 million in damage. The Thibodaux Civic Center sustained $1 million in damage. Losses to the fisheries industries and agriculture topped $10 million. Direct damages, lack of road access, and inoperable communication systems caused interruptions in employment and operations for workers and energy service businesses.
Over 5,000 individual sewer treatment plants were damaged, destroyed or lost power, which caused untreated human waste to enter the watershed. Oil spills occurred from shortage tanks located in the southern third of the parish. Saltwater intruded into the parish potable water supply.
Repairing, restoring and looking ahead
According to Lafourche Parish Office of Emergency Preparedness Executive Assistant Eric Benoit, much of the parish’s effort since the storms have been spent repairing areas damaged.
“Since the storm we have been improving drainage and recapping levees,” he said.
Getting the lines of transportation back to pre-storm level has been an on going process since the end of 2005. Over 20 miles of Highway 1 were under water during Rita and received extensive water damage.
“We assisted in the immediate removal of debris from the roadway with inmates and deputies to make the road safe for travel,” Weidel said.
While many rebuilding projects have been completed, thought help of local and federal governments, many are to be bankrolled by FEMA are still in the paperwork phase, according to local officials.
“We are still talking to FEMA about mitigating things,” Guidry said. “I have at least two meetings a month with them. The only drawback I find is that they are slow. We are near completion. The rest is just minor stuff.”
Benoit concurs. “We are better off today than we were a year ago,” he said. “We have been looking at procedures, redoing plans, and working with agencies to improve response time.”
Office of Emergency Preparedness Director Chris Boudreaux presented the parish’s new hurricane plan to the Council just before the beginning of hurricane season. The seven-phase plan provides tasks and objectives for parish emergency manages.
“Our plan is flexible,” explained Boudreaux. “We’re going to react differently depending on the severity of the storm, and this plan can be adapted to any storm.”
Since the devastation of last year, parish employees have attended trainings, conferences and drills to learn more on emergency management with an emphasis on hurricane preparation and recovery management.
A large problem that hampered any recovery efforts directly after Rita was communication, which the parish has been working to improve among first responder agencies. “In person” communication has also been amped up. The parish has staged meeting with law enforcement, fire protection, health care, and transportation agencies.
“These meetings create good working relationship between the parish, the men and women that are the front lines during the storm,” Parish President Charlotte Randolph said.
At least one parish official sees the silver lining around the storm clouds of Rita. Weidel said the experience his office gained during last hurricane season will serve them well though future disasters.
“All of us that went through Katrina and Rita are certainly more experienced in knowing how to handle a difficult situation,” he said. “We were capable of handling situations because we functioned pretty well through the 2005 storm season. The worst we have seen.”
