Officials praise cooperation after hurricanes, look ahead

Local, parish and federal officials expressed pride Tuesday in the way they’ve communicated during recent hurricane crises.

But another form of communication remains a source of concern: the digital kind that makes cellphones and emergency-service radios work.

That was the word at Tuesday’s hurricane preparedness meeting at the Emergency Operations Center, headquarters for the host Port of Morgan City. The meeting brought together representatives from governments and agencies including St. Mary municipalities, the port and the parish Levee District, the Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the National Weather Service.

The meeting followed this month’s release of the Colorado State Tropical Weather and Meteorological Research early forecast. The predication is for a sixth straight hurricane season with more than average tropical weather.

Among the people at the head table was U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Lafayette.

Higgins weighed in after speakers brought up one example of hurricane-time cooperation: the use of real-time data collected by meteoroidal stations near Berwick and down the Atchafalaya River.

Port of Morgan City Executive Director Raymond “Mac” Wade noted that the port pays for the maintenance of its two stations, which offer information about wind and rain to NOAA and the weather service. The stations cost a total of about $100,000 a year to maintain, Wade said in a text message Wednesday.

“The government is using that information ...,” Wade said at Tuesday's meeting. “We will be following up with Clay’s office and the senators’ offices because we pay a lot of money for those things.”

“I think the port should be able to access federal monies to at least offset the expense of maintenance for that,” Higgins said. “It’s used by the federal government. It’s common sense.”

One of the unexpected impacts from Ida was the impact on emergency communications. Local agencies were using FirstNet, an AT&T product designed to provide high-speed wireless and broadband to emergency agencies.

But when the hurricane knocked out AT&T cellphone service, First-Net went with it. Local agencies scrambled to find older conventional radios.

Morgan City Mayor Lee Dragna called the situation “horrible.”

“We went out and bought a bunch of old school radios for our city employees to where they can communicate,” Dragna said, “because we know their high-tech system is junk whenever this happens.”

Tim Osborn, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration manager, also made a suggestion he’s made before. Officials should work with wireless providers for access to portable cellphone towers that emergency responders can use when phone service is out.

St. Mary Parish Homeland Security Director David Naquin urged local officials to do their advance planning. Preparations include making sure generators are operable and that fuel and filters have been secured.

Last year, local firefighters helped people who require oxygen therapy by filling bottles and providing electricity for recharges. Seventy-five oxygen bottles were filled.

“I had never realized how important that was until last year,” Naquin said.

He encouraged people to go to getagameplan.org, the state web-site with hurricane preparation information. Officials should also make provisions for documenting debris removal for reimbursement from federal authorities.

And Naquin thinks officials should consider a better way to provide last-resort shelter.

“I think we’ve got to do something other than what we’re doing,” Naquin said.

When hurricanes threaten, officials will get briefings after regu-lar National Weather Service updates.

“I promise you, we live and die by what they say,” Naquin said.

But people shouldn’t let early hurricane track models persuade them from taking precautions, said Roger Erickson, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Ser-vice in Lake Charles.

Forecasts are getting more accurate, he said. Within 24 hours of landfall, the forecast can say whether a storm will strike within 20 miles of a given location.

“That’s as good as it’s going to get,” Erickson said.

He used Hurricane Ida as an example. Six days before landfall, Ida was moving along the eastern coast of Central America toward Yucatan with no apparent threat to Louisiana. The forecast didn’t show Ida heading for Louisiana until three days before landfall, and even then the possible landfalls stretched from Galveston to Mobile.

As Ida approached the coast, Erickson said, the wind strengthened from 85 mph to 150 mph, Category 4 strength, within 24 hours.

The biggest threat comes from floods, Erickson said.

“Hurricanes are the big, sexy version of the floods,” he said, “but in reality, floods are the No. 1 disaster we get year in and year out, statistically.”

The parish’s levee system is in good shape as the hurricane season approaches, said Mike Brocato, operations manager for the St. Mary Parish Levee District.

“We’re fortunate in St. Mary Parish that we have these miles and miles of levees thanks to the Corps of Engineers and the Mississippi River and Tributaries Project,” Brocato said.
“We use them both for riverine and hurricane protection.”

The Yokely Extension project is awaiting a movable flood wall from Germany to close one of the last gaps between the Wax Lake Outlet and the Charenton Canal, Brocato said. He’s hoping the wall will be in place this summer.

The Bayou Teche Flood Control Structure was completed last year and is designed to block storm surge from reach-ing the Teche.

The Bayou Chene Flood Control Structure isn’t primarily designed as a hurricane measure, but it can block back-flooding when the Atchafalaya runs high. It’s not complete, but it is operational, Brocato said.

Other local structures can be closed within 10 hours. The Bayou Chene structure will require 10 hours and “a bunch of money at that,” Brocato said.

Also Tuesday, NOAA’s Osborn praised the level of multiagency cooperation in disaster response.

After Ida, Morgan City was a “point of stability” and “launch pad for recovery,” Osborn said.

The city was a staging area for survey boats charged with ensuring that the region’s water-ways were safe. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers provided fuel, and the Coast Guard brought in water for the crews.

Local businessman Hanko Hoffpauir even provided a replacement outboard engine.

“You guys are family,” Osborn said.

Capt. Ben Russell of the Coast Guard’s Marine Safety Unit thanked the city, and especially Dragna, for putting up personnel who worked in the region with Morgan City as a base soon after the storm. A peak total of 250 Coast Guard members stayed in Morgan City as they worked to open waterways in the area damaged by Ida.

More than 70% of the Coast Guard’s personnel who live in the five-parish region were left homeless because of the storm, he said.

The Coast Guard was able to finish its work within 45 days, Russell said.

“It couldn’t have happened without the support and partnerships you gave us,” he said.