Franklin emerges from hurricane almost unscathed

FRANKLIN – The city of Franklin came out of Hurricane Francine relatively unscathed as the storm hit east of the western end of St. Mary Parish on Sept. 11 and moved quickly northeastward through Louisiana and into Mississippi.
Francine reached Category 2 with maximum winds of 100 mph before hitting Terrebonne Parish about 5 p.m. Sept. 11 as a Category 1 storm. Francine was downgraded to tropical storm later the same night and was a tropical depression by the next morning.
More than 382,000 customers statewide were without electricity Thursday morning. More than 61,000 power customers in Mississippi were without electricity as the storm headed into that state as a tropical depression.
Most of Franklin was without power Sept. 11 as the hurricane hit, and 13,810 of Cleco’s 19,002 customers in the parish lost power, but the majority of customers on the west end of the parish had power restored by Thursday morning, according to Cleco. Only around 154 customers from Jeanerette to the Calumet Cut reported power still out by noon Thursday.
While Franklin saw extensive street flooding from hours of torrential rain, along with downed tree limbs and power outages, the city was quickly working to get back to normal, Franklin Mayor Eugene Foulcard said. The city instituted a curfew until 7 a.m. Thursday.
“We came out pretty good, thank God,” Foulcard said. “I’m very sorry for our friend and family and my colleagues, the mayors on the eastern end of the parish. They really took a beating.
“I’ve spoken with (Morgan City) Mayor (Lee) Dragna and (Patterson) Mayor (Rodney) Grogan. I haven’t spoken with (Berwick) Mayor Duval (Arthur), but I understand they took a pretty severe beating from the storm.
“We fared extremely well. I guess that slight jog to the east at the last minute spared the city of Franklin. We did have a few tree limbs and a few trees that fell. We immediately started doing an assessment at daybreak (Thursday) and now we’re clearing off all of the streets in Franklin and we’re attempting to get back to normal.”
Foulcard said some businesses and restaurants had asked if they could reopen Thursday, and were told of course they could.
“We’re back to normal,” he said. “All of our operational pumps within the city did their jobs – the South Willow Street pump, the Fifth Street pump, the pump in Pecan Acres and the pumps at the flood gate, and the Yokely drainage pumps.”
The mayor said there was some street flooding, but with that amount of rainfall it is extremely difficult for those pumps to get the water out immediately.
“It is extremely difficult for the pumps to keep up with that much rainfall in such a short order of time,” he said. “I know a few people were upset, saying that the city should do more to clean storm drains. As we have always asked our citizens, they have to be mindful of the things they throw out of their vehicles – cigarette packages, fast food bags, you name it, all of that goes into the drain eventually, and all of that trash builds up and it can slow the pace of major storm runoff water that needs to get pumped out of Franklin.”
The mayor called for people to work together during emergencies instead of assigning blame for problems.
“We all have to work together,” he said. “It’s no time for the name-calling and back-biting because we all are going through things, and what are we doing for the least of us?
“We need to be neighborly, we need to treat each other with dignity and respect, and we’ll get through this OK. We can’t do this if we’re bickering and fighting over whether or not the city has a storm drain cleaned properly.
“We’re doing our part as best we can, but we also would like to ask the citizens not to blow grass in the storm drains after you’ve cut your grass. Don’t throw trash and other debris in your storm drains.
“If you have any ditches that might need to be cleaned out, contact City Hall so we can address it.
“We can’t see everything. That is why there’s a mayor here and five council members. You can pass that along to any one of us and we’ll make sure something gets done.”
The mayor said he was thankful all of the pumps worked and the new floodgate at the Baldwin Canal kept the flood surge out.
“It really didn’t hit the 5- to 10-foot mark (that was forecast at one point) because the storm was moving extremely fast,” the mayor said. “That was our saving grace – it came out extremely fast. We were very fortunate.”
By Thursday morning, he said, 90% to 95% of the streets that had flooding had seen the water starting to recede.