St. Mary Parish leaders watching Marco closely

St. Mary Parish government has plans in place for tropical storms Marco and Laura, but it’s just a matter of getting a better picture from the National Weather Service of where it is going before deploying the plans, parish Office of Emergency Preparedness Director David Naquin said Sunday afternoon.
He said Marco has just been a difficult storm to track.
“Their confidence level is so low that it’s really making it difficult for us to make a hard game plan,” Naquin said of the weather service. “Now, we have a lot of plans in place, but we haven’t instituted any of them because we don’t really have a good idea where the thing’s going yet.”
In St. Martin Parish, Parish President Chester Cedars already has called a voluntary evacuation for the Stephensville and Belle River areas due to the potential flooding.
“Part of that is be-cause of the storm surges,” Cedars said in a St. Martin Parish Government Facebook video Sunday.
The voluntary evacuation is necessary to give residents ample opportunity to evacuate, the parish said in a press release.
Cedars said the parish will issue a curfew be-ginning Monday at 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. Tuesday and Tuesday likely from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. Wednesday.
Anyone needing further information or assistance should con-tact the St. Martin Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness at 337-394-2808.
St. Martin Parish declared a state of emergency Saturday, while St. Mary Parish did so around noon Sunday.
“We are now just kind of monitoring what’s going to go down,” Naquin said.
The 4 p.m. track re-leased predicted Marco would skirt the Louisiana coast from east to west, something that is bad for St. Mary Parish, Naquin said.
“It’s going to give us a lot of south wind,” Naquin said. “It’s going to push a lot of water in here.”
However, the Marco is expected to drop from a hurricane to a tropical storm right before it passes below St. Mary Parish, too, so that will help with less intense winds hitting the area, Naquin said.
He said no evacuations have been announced, but they could be coming shortly for the flood-prone areas south of the Intracoastal Waterway.
No curfews also have been planned yet, Naquin said.
While Laura is fore-cast to hit along the Texas/Louisiana line or possibly the Holly Beach area, Naquin said it will cause problems for St. Mary, too.
“We’re going to basically have a south wind for about three days from Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and that can push a lot of water,” he said, noting the wind could be 35-40 mph or maybe a bit higher.
While he said the parish can handle the 5 to 10 inches of rain projected, “I don’t know if we can handle it when we get a bunch of storm surge pushed at us,” Naquin said.
In anticipation for the storms, parish and municipal leaders encouraged citizens to monitor them.
“If you have flooded for Lilly, Rita or Ike or even Barry, then you’re probably going to flood for this one. … So you need to make preparations,” Naquin said.
One positive is the Atchafalaya River is at its lowest level in a year or more, which would make it easier to handle a potential spike in the river, and Naquin said the St. Mary Parish Levee District feels the area is in good shape.
According to the National Weather Service’s Advanced Hydrologic Prediction Service, the Atchafalaya River was at 2.41 feet as of 5 p.m. Sunday. It is forecast to jump to as high as 5 feet later in the week before dropping to about 3 feet by Thursday evening.
While Morgan City Mayor Frank “Boo” Grizzaffi said a decision would be made in the noon hour Monday about closing any floodgates, he doesn’t anticipate having to do so. Berwick Mayor Duval Arthur didn’t think the town of Berwick would have to close any gates, either.
As for power outages, parish and municipal leaders said crews will work to restore utilities between the storms as long as they can.
“I talked to the people at Cleco and they’re ready for this,” Arthur said of the town’s utility provider, who also services other portions of the parish. “I think they’re very prepared, and they’re ready to go in case a storm does come and cause us some damage. They’re going to be ready to help us.”
Grizzaffi said city utility crews will work in a bucket truck to restore power as long as the winds are less than 35 mph.
“If the wind is above 35, we’ll diagnose the problem on the ground, but we’re not getting in a bucket,” he said.
In the Tri-City area, debris and cleaning ditches and drains were among the preps municipalities conducted in their storm preps.
As for the citizens, “My only advice to our citizens as for right now is to basically stay put,” Patterson Mayor Rodney Grogan said.
However, for those living in mobile homes or in low-lying areas, Grogan recommended they find a family member they can stay with until the wind and rain stop.
“By doing so … it kind of helps us out with the COVID situation,” he said.
Grogan also asked that his residents do not cut any additional trees or leave them on the side of the road.
“I think everybody has basically tied down a lot of their things that can be taken away in the wind,” he said. “They’ve really been complying and making preparations, so along with the city and the citizens doing their part, I think we’re going to do fine.”