Storms hold mixed messages

Nearly two weeks have passed since we as a community were presented the threat of a storm named Gordon. As I watched the updates on the National Hurricane Center’s website along with everyone else, I had mixed hurricane emotions.

It began to appear that Gordon would track to our east, giving us at worst a scrape with the “good” side of the storm. That’s always good news. The bad news is that with us escaping the worst, someone else would have to cope with it. The best news for all concerned is that a storm takes a turn toward staying at sea, but that’s hard to accomplish in the Gulf of Mexico.

The biggest question for individual households is preparedness. For myself that’s not a big issue, as I know I am not evacuating. It is my duty to tell the story of what happens here when disaster hits and I can’t do that from Monroe or Alexandria. Nonetheless I have a plan, and you should too.

Are all of your important papers in one bag or box that you can easily take with you if the storm is bearing down? What about the most important photographs that you haven’t digitized or made copies of? The ones from back during WWII or before that? Now is the time, if you haven’t already, to make plans for those things.

In our part of the world there is no such thing as a “little” storm, although we are a lot safer because of flood gates and levees that are the result of fairly new construction. The way to plan is to pretend that none of those things are going to work, and act accordingly. In truth we really don’t know how they would all work in unison if a big storm were to come. There are still areas that have yet to be fortified. Water, behaving as water does, is expert at finding paths of least resistance.

As we all carefully watched Gordon’s progress I had occasion to speak with government leaders to get a sense of where things were at with our defenses. This storm began to be serious on a weekend, and I can tell you that throughout that weekend the people in charge were in touch and reachable.

It was 15 years ago that a storm named Bill moved northward from the Yucatan Peninsula toward us, and it made a mess of lower Terrebonne. The wind was not that bad. But I watched as the water climbed higher on the formidable pilings that held the camp I lived in away from the ground. Within hours — and without a landfall — the water was high and there did not appear to have been much official response. This was because the storm advanced on a weekend, and it sort of caught everyone by surprise including myself. We ended up doing alright. But Bill was a reminder to me that weekends can be particularly trying periods.

In the case of Gordon, Parish President Gordon Dove took hands-on charge of sand and bag sites. There were a few initial glitches but the message got straightened out, and by Monday morning all the places where sand was supposed to be available were up and running, eight hours earlier than promised.

We are only as good as our last encounter with a storm, and from the looks of the Atlantic right now we may still end up busy before this hurricane season ends.

Batteries, potted meat and water are still in good supply so grab them while you can.

And we’ll all pray that we shall have no reason to use them.