Tuesday, June 7
June 7, 2011
Economic life of LA1 businesses in limbo
June 9, 2011South Louisiana is no stranger to the hurricane, and because of past experience in preparation for and recovery from the disasters, Lafourche Parish officials feel like they are better prepared to handle a storm than ever.
“We’re ready,” Parish President Charlotte Randolph said.
Lafourche has three evacuation centers, one for each region of the parish: the Larose Civic Center, Central Lafourche High School and Thibodaux High School. The centers are only opened for sub-Category 3 storms.
The parish does not use specific category numbers when contemplating a mandatory evacuation. That is done on a situational basis, Randolph said.
The worst-case scenario planning for potential Mississippi River backwater flooding has the parish ahead of schedule, at least as it pertains to sandbags. The parish filled 160,000 sandbags in flood preparation and deployed none.
Parish spokesperson Brennan Matherne it is the largest stockpile of sandbags the parish has ever had on hand, just in time for hurricane season.
Three years after hurricanes Gustav and Ike, Lafourche’s storm protection might not be perfect, but it is better than years past, the north Lafourche and south Lafourche levee directors agreed.
On the frontlines of Lafourche Parish, the South Lafourche Levee District is assessing the system’s functionality and conducting routine maintenance work. The district will make its second round of assessments in the first week of August, before the heart of hurricane season.
“There is some drainage valves that we have to close for a hurricane, so we take this week to make sure everything is working and nothing is causing obstruction to be able to close those gates,” Windell Curole, the SLLD executive director, said Friday.
Curole is also monitoring the work of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project that he says is imperative to the Larose-to-Golden Meadow ring levee system. SLLD has urged the corps to ensure contractors on scene get the job finished before hurricane season reaches its peak.
“The Corps of Engineers is actually raising the wall at the Golden Meadow pump station,” Curole said. “It’s very critical that they get that thing finished before August 15.”
Category 3 storms, and some slow-moving and wide Category 2 storms, are when Curole said the ring levee system can begin to be tested. “It will protect a certain level, but if a storm pushes water 13, 14 or 15 feet high, we have a good chance of having the whole system go under, and we tell people that constantly,” he said.
The SLLD system stood tall in the face of Hurricane Gustav, a storm with similar parameters to what the system was designed to protect. Gustav left the levee system with four feet of clearance.
Still, Curole cautions residents that the system is designed to protect property and not lives. “What we feel good about is that it’s going to take the worst part of a powerful storm to get us,” he said. “That’s the comfort. Any time there’s a powerful storm, we still tell people to leave.”
In north Lafourche, under the jurisdiction of the North Lafourche Conservation, Levee and Drainage District, work has been completed on fortifying the main levee system from Lockport to Valentine.
NLCLD has also worked to clear outfall canals and remove other obstructions, Executive Director Dwayne Bourgeois said.
“We’re in the best shape we can be,” Bourgeois said, echoing the SLLD sentiments. “Obviously, all of the levees could be better, but they are as good as they’ve ever been. Some of them are much better off than they’ve ever been.”
In some cases, however, it’s impossible to prevent disaster. “The lesson is that a storm like Katrina, if the worst part of that storm would have hit anywhere from Brownsville, Texas to Maine it would have destroyed any area that it hit,” Curole said. “That’s what people need to understand, there are things out there that we just do not have the capability to handle.”
