Cindy goes inland; area mostly unscathed
June 22, 2017
Marie Barrilleaux
June 23, 2017
“Bless this new building, bless the technology and equipment here, and from the work they assist in producing, may we keep safe all brothers and sisters in our area.” That was the simple request the Very Rev. Josh Rodrigue asked of God in looking over Terrebonne Parish’s new Emergency Operations Center in Gray. Rodrigue made the request through the intercession of Our Lady of Prompt Succor, the Patroness of Louisiana and of hurricanes and disasters.
Last Wednesday hundreds packed into the new EOC as past and present parish officials celebrated the new building with a ribbon cutting. The operations center, named after late attorney Joseph L. Waitz, serves as the main office for the Terrebonne Office of Homeland Security and
Emergency Preparedness. The center cost $7.43 million, with $3 million coming from Terrebonne and $4.3 million coming from state capital outlay money.
TOHSEP moved into the building after a year-and-a-half of construction. The parish broke ground on the project in January 2016 with plans to move TOHSEP in by the end of that year. However, weather delays caused contractors to fall a bit behind schedule, but TOHSEP Director Earl Eues said his main priority was getting moved in and settled before hurricane season.
“I kept telling the contractor with the rain days and everything, I said, ‘Hey guys, you can take as long as you need, but you got to get me in by June 1.’ And they were able to do that,” Eues said.
Eues said the new center is very much worth the wait. The 11,000 sq. ft. building has 8-inch concrete wall panels and is built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane, a far cry from TOHSEP’s previous office in a converted warehouse on Capitol Blvd. which could only withstand a Category 1 or 2 storm. The new EOC also has impact-resistant glass, an incident command center that can seat 64 people and a 100 ft. radio tower outside that can withstand 225 mph gusts. According to Eues, one of the main priorities in designing the building was including two dormitory-style bedrooms, with 12 beds in each room, for officials to sleep in during storms. “There’s two things I really wanted to accomplish. One was the incident command room was large enough to house the number of people we needed,” Eues
said. “The second thing was we definitely needed sleeping quarters. We didn’t have anywhere for people to sleep when we operated for 24 hours. So, having the sleeping quarters, we had to have that.”
Terrebonne Parish President Gordon Dove’s administration oversaw most of the project’s construction, even though work on it began during the end of his predecessor Michel Claudet’s term. Dove, who as a State Representative was instrumental in getting state dollars for the EOC, said while the parish’s main storm protection is the Morganza-to-the-Gulf levee system, the EOC is a critical part of Terre-bonne’s safety as a central nervous system during hurricane responses.
“This is our lifeblood in an emergency, and we’re progressing forward,” Dove said.
Terrebonne Parish Council Chairman Dirk Guidry praised the work of Terrebonne leaders in building the new center and also stressed the building’s importance in the parish’s most trying times.
“It’s something that’s really important for the people of Terrebonne Parish in a time of disaster. Hopefully in the next 20, 30 years it’s never used, and we have to clean the spiders out,” Guidry said.
However, even when the Gulf of Mexico is clear of storms, Terrebonne could still see benefits from the new EOC. Eues said the EOC will serve as a multiuse building and will be open to other government agencies for meetings and training sessions during both daytime and the evening. According to Eues, the building has already hosted a number of meetings since April.
Former State Rep. Hunt Downer, Dove’s predecessor in Baton Rouge, also attended the ceremony. Downer, who worked with the building’s namesake, said Waitz, father of current District Attorney Joseph L. Waitz Jr., was always dedicated to emergency preparedness. Downer shared a lasting message from the late Waitz concerning humanity’s battles against storms.
“He left me with this: he said, ‘I don’t understand why they don’t prepare. When you go to war with Mother Nature, you’re going to lose. The question is how much you lose. And what determines how much you lose is your preparation,'” Downer said.
Terrebonne Sheriff Jerry arpenter said he would be bunking in one of those beds during future storms, but he advised the public to leave the parish when a hurricane warning goes out. Larpenter said the new center will assist him, Dove and other parish leaders in their most important job: getting Terrebonne taxpayers back as soon as possible to rebuild and get their lives back on track.
“Sooner or later, we’re going to get it. We’re going to get the big one. So, we’re going to be as best-prepared as we can be,” Larpenter said.
