Officials Prep for tropical storm season

The Port of Morgan City, St. Mary Parish Office of Emergency Preparedness, St. Mary Levee District, and National Weather Service hosted the annual 2017 Hurricane Preparedness Meeting on Friday.
The meeting focused on evacuation plans for the parish and tools that are used to predict storms and storm dam-age.
Duval Arthur, director of St. Mary Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, spoke on the evacuation plan for St. Mary Parish.
Rapides Parish Coliseum in Alexandria will be the designated shelter for the citizens of St. Mary Parish and lower St. Martin Parish. The shelter is prepared to hold 700-800 people from the parish. Pets will also be allowed at the shelter.
St. Mary Parish OHSEP will begin its evacuation procedure when a hurricane is 48 hours away from land-fall. The first 48 hours will be used to evacuate hospitals, nursing homes and jails, and to accommodate those with special needs.
When a hurricane is 36 hours away, citizens who live in mobile homes and outside of the levee protection, and those who are without transportation, should begin evacuation. The St. Mary Community Action Agency will use state buses to transport those who are without transportation. The designated pick up points are Morgan City Junior High School and Franklin High School.
When a hurricane is 24 hours away, mandatory evacuation is called for all nonessential citizens, which leaves only emergency workers left behind.
Roger Erickson, warning coordination meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Lake Charles, discussed the four weather hazards associated with hurricanes and experimental products that are used by the National Weather Service to assist in predicting the potential outcomes.
The four hazards that are associated with hurricanes are storm surge, rainfall, winds and tornadoes. Erickson discussed the different tools that are used by the National Hurricane Center. The Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook is a product that updates four times daily.
The tool tracks tropical depressions that occur off the coast of Africa and hurricanes as they are produced.
The Storm Prototype Storm Surge Watch/Warning Graphic tool predicts the worse-case scenario for flooding.
Erickson demonstrated that the majority of St. Mary Parish will be predicted to have at least 9 feet of flooding from a hurricane that is a Category 2 or higher. Potential Storm Surge Flooding Map shows the height of water above ground level in the event of a storm. Each of these tools can be viewed on the NHC website at www.nhc.noaa.gov.