GUMBO GURU: Charlotte’s Country Kitchen
May 5, 2015
Wallace Thibodaux
May 13, 2015
More than a week after a fast-moving storm system strafed communities in northern Lafourche Parish and surrounding areas, emergency officials are still tallying damages to determine what help – if any – state and federal resources can make available to reimburse local government and individuals.
The April 27 storms spawned tornadoes in Chackbay, Napoleonville, Bayou Gauche and Kenner, and while no known injuries or deaths were reported and damage to property not widespread, effects on the psyches and in some cases finances of local residents linger.
Effects were felt for days in communities far removed from where the weather did its worst, with power to thousands of homes lost in northern Lafourche, in many cases not restored until Thursday, four days after the cataclysm.
“We are blessed, and we are grateful no one was hurt,” said Brandy Marroy, a hair-stylist who lives just north of Thibodaux with her sons, 5-year-old Brendan and 4-year-old Braylon.
A tornado or heavy, straight-line winds – an official determination has not yet been made – slammed into the mobile home park where they live, nestled in a cul-de-sac just off La. Highway 20. The storm knocked a neighbor’s shed sideways, smack into the side of Marroy’s home, tearing a gash into her bedroom wall and causing utility pipes, including her sewage line, to come undone.
An insurance adjuster visiting Saturday; now Marroy waits for a claim determination, which should come this week.
The official record of tornado reports paints a picture with numbers of the disaster’s ragged, dervish path.
The first report was at 2:15 p.m., from Pierre Part in Assumption Parish, with another 13 minutes later in Napoleonville. Two reports were received from three miles northwest of Thibodaux – likely including the event that damaged Marroy’s home and caused extensive damage in the nearby Sugarland subdivision, both at 2:40, with two more reports from the north-northwest of Thibodaux three minutes later. At 3:08, a report came in from Des Allemands and then at 3:23 from Kenner.
“We had a low pressure system, a typical spring set-up in the plains states,” said meteorologist Robert Ricks at the National Weather Service office in Slidell.
Simultaneously a subtropical jet was moving northeast from the Texas coast, causing winds of 120 or 130 knots 30,000 to 40,000 feet above.
“You get a lot of instability and a lot of chaotic weather that can take place,” Ricks said. “The low pressure area is the driver, and when it taps into the energy of the jet aloft, and you get the large hail.”
The effect also causes rotation, the turning of air that occurs in the atmosphere, which results in funnel clouds. The maelstrom moved earthward, resulting in tornado touchdowns.
“This is the peak tornado time of the year, with some cold air in place for a while and then the warm air kind of clashes,” Ricks explained.
Damage from the storm was visible along the roadsides of Chackbay just north of Thibodaux, where the trucks of Entergy crews swarmed around utility poles with snapped wires, their ladders towering over littered lawns, some plagued by fallen transformer boxes.
On La. Highway 20 just south of the Choctaw road crews from the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development moved slowly southward Wednesday, feeding the remnants of tree limbs and trunks into a chipper that spewed the remains back out toward the road shoulders.
Carl Harding, the DOTD supervisor on scene, said the assignment was for his workers not unlike hurricane cleanup, and serves vital purposes including aiding damage assessment and, of course, access to the roads for vehicles.
“It’s very similar,” said Harding. “We don’t understand all the damage until everything is cleared up. This is the afternoon we usually would have the crew members out on tractors cutting the grass.”
There was cause for celebration Wednesday at the Go-Bears convenience store, near the junction of highways 20 and 304, the latter of which winds through the hamlet of Choupic.
On generator power for nearly two full days, the gas station and store had been an oasis for residents.
“Once our generator came on we were able to supply gas, hot food and drinks,” said manager Ann Thibodaux, acknowledging that before then some customers were not all that understanding. A few, she said, were frustrated by an ATM and gas pumps that couldn’t be used.
“We were stupid crazy busy,” said assistant manager Connie Gaudet.
The women noted how hurricanes arrive prior to watches and warnings that can last for days, giving people an opportunity to stock up. Last Monday’s storms came suddenly, turning the Chackbay skies green-black, blotting out all but the slightest strands of grayish daylight.
“We can understand now what happens to those people in the Midwest that get those bad tornadoes,” Thibodaux said. “We have never had anything like that.”
In the hardest hit areas crews of volunteers did what they could to help into the weekend, and may return this week.
Duncan Freche of the Louisiana Baptist Disaster Relief Group said his church members were fanning out wherever needed, lending helping hands.
“We’ve been taking trees off of houses and trailers and cleaning yards,” said Freche, whose group was primarily assembled in Hammond, a place that is no stranger to damage from hurricanes as well as tornadoes. “Mostly it’s been tree cleanup. It’s all very good and we have met very nice people.”
In Choctaw, a secluded community of moss-draped trees and small clusters of houses, the storm swath was evident from broken limbs; the remains of sheds and yard equipment were already piled up in front of houses, much of that due to work by the Baptists.
The normal soundtrack of the little town’s main road, chirping birds and frogs or the occasional wisps of French dialogue that waft from the porch of a simple neighborhood bar, was replaced by the staccato generator grinding that could be heard at every turn.
The 6th Ward Middle School, like others in northern Lafourche, was devoid of students, just like Bayou Boeuf Elementary School a few miles to the north and west.
There were few tree casualties there, but the lack of electricity made residents weary.
Parish and state officials said that relief for losses – to residents, businesses and the Lafourche Parish itself – is not likely to come from Baton Rouge or Washington D.C. Whether that prediction is accurate will come after damage assessments are done.
Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency Monday that lasted approximately 24 hours. But not disaster declarations have been made.
“There is a threshold,” said Parish Manager Archie Chaisson. “It’s around $390,000 for FEMA and from the state it’s $1.1 million. I don’t think there is going to be relief for us. We will have to see what our expenses are, but so far there have been no outrageous salary or fuel costs.”
Chaisson as well as Parish President Charlotte Randolph were impressed by the manner in which neighbors pitched in to help neighbors in the wake of the storms.
But they were not surprised.
“This is a help your neighbor community,” Chiasson said of the parish’s northern reaches. “The people here are really resilient.”
In Bayou Bouef and Kraemer, where cell phone service is ordinarily spotty, electricity out and telephone landlines affected, Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre ordered additional patrols, so that deputies could easily be flagged down by residents needing help but unable to call.
The bureaucratic confines for financial relief are understandable to affected residents, some of whom do not have private insurance, though the prospect of no storm aid was distressing for those suffering losses.
Trudy Loupe of Kraemer got her power restored Thursday but did not expect being fully functional till Friday.
“We just got the power on,” she said Thursday. “We didn’t have too much lost that was frozen. But food that is in the icebox has to go out. Tonight and tomorrow I am going to get things going back to normal. We didn’t have storm damages here in Kraemer, just from not having electricity.”
“I’m not at all happy about it,” she said of the likelihood that government aid would not be forthcoming. “I lost three, maybe four days of business from not opening.”
