MILLION DOLLAR KID
May 11, 2017
Nicholls education student aces national contest
May 11, 2017
That’s what the Credeurs Learned during last week’s thunderstorms, when two waves of high winds, heavy downpours and even some reported hail battered Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes over Wednesday and Thursday morning.
Sherry Credeur was at her home on St. Charles Bypass in northern Lafourche during the first round of storms. Sherry and her baby grandson, Landon, were together as the rain and winds battered the area. First the power went out, with Landon making noise and exploring the dark house. Then, she felt something out of the norm at the house, even for a place that has seen extreme weather before.
“The whole house shook. It was pitch, pitch dark out there,” Sherry said.
After a while, Sherry went outside and noticed a trunk resting on the awning above her front porch. One of two large trees in her front yard fell on the home’s roof. Neither Sherry nor Landon were injured, but she was in no rush to address the massive endeavor dropped on her doorstep by the day’s tempest.
“I left [the tree]. Eventually I called my husband to tell him a tree did fall. ‘I knew it was going to fall eventually,’ he said. ‘Take some pictures,'” Sherry said. James Credeur, Sherry’s
husband, came back from his job and got to work on the tree. While Entergy crews focused on downed power lines just down the street, James was on top of his awning, cutting the tree up piece-by-piece with his chainsaw. Assisting him on the roof was Josh Massey, who lives down the street. The cleanup became a case of Cajun timbersports, with Josh and James taking turns cutting the trunk into small pieces and throwing them over, each piece hitting the wet, muddy lawn with a loud thump.
Bert Miller was on the ground picking up that lumber and placing it on the curb for pickup. Miller, who lives across the street from the Credeurs, said he was observing the early storm when he saw a sign in the sky to get moving.
“I opened the back door to look and it was a twister forming in the sky, but it hadn’t touched down or anything. I noticed a blue I hadn’t seen, almost like a spark-type of blue (in the sky),” Miller said.
Miller left his home to meet family in Thibodaux after seeing the inklings of a twister. The formation did not seem to fully realize, as the National Weather Service does not list any reported tornado in Louisiana from its May 3 weather report. Miller was unable to make it all the way to Thibodaux in the storm, and upon returning to St. Charles Bypass, he saw James already addressing the new addition to his porch.
“They just had started (when I returned). When I heard the chainsaw, that’s when I came over to help,” Miller said.
Helping Miller pick up the pieces James and Josh were throwing were Tre’von Short and Jason Guilbeaux, two teens who lived down the street. Short and Guilbeaux were at school for the early storms, but upon getting home they saw the hubbub at the Credeur house and came over to help.
With the most of the trunk on the roof cut up and discarded, the crew still had to negotiate getting the remainder of the tree to ground level. If it were to free-fall, with all its weight, the trunk could possibly do more damage to the Credeurs’ porch. Enter Russell Massey, Josh’s father, who pulled up to the house in a small tractor with a front end loader. Russell first used the loader to lift up the trunk, giving James and Josh better angles to cut through the tree. Once it was time to bring it down, he got a hold of the trunk with the loader and slowly reversed, dropping the tree down safely on the ground. The chainsaw assault on the tree continued on the grass, with the team cutting up the rest of the tree until nothing remained but turned over dirt.
The Credeur house was not the only site of distress from the weather last week. Across Terrebonne and Lafourche, residents and workers took to downed power lines, fallen trees and debris on roads. Thousands of residents were without power by midday Wednesday, according to Entergy. The National Weather Service’s rain totals from last week saw some areas in the southern parts of the parishes receiving as much as six inches of rain. The northern parts were not spared, either, as most of that area received at least four inches of rain as well as incredibly strong winds. The Lafourche Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness staff was busy at work in its command center tracking reports of damaged property and flooded streets such as Belle Helene St. and South Sugarfield Drive. St. Charles Elementary School had to close its doors due to power outages.
As residents across the Bayou Region dealt with the pounding rains and imposing thunder, the Credeurs, Masseys and the rest of the St. Charles Bypass team showed Sherry the value of a caring, close-knit community when the weather gets boisterous.
“I’m just very thankful,” Sherry said.
No, it did not snow this past week, though it sure looks like it based on this submitted photo, which shows the amount of hail that fell in southern Lafourche Parish last week. Some locals had damage in the severe weather, but all-in-all, we seemed to have gotten out of most of the worst the weather had to offer.
