Copyright 2006 The Times-Picayune Publishing Company
By CHARLIE CHAPPLE
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
With memories of Hurricane Katrina still fresh in their minds, some 200 officials gathered Thursday at the St. Tammany Parish Emergency Operations Center for a tune-up exercise for the looming hurricane season.
Officials, representing agencies from law enforcement to hospitals to fire departments and the School Board, jammed the “war room” of the center in downtown Covington to hone their abilities to respond to calls for help.
There was no levity as mock reports of problems -- such as a flooded subdivision or a gas leak near a downed live power line -- popped up on computer screens around the 25-seat command table. The mood was all serious.
After working through Katrina, “everyone has a different attitude,” said Deputy Chief Mike Core of the Sheriff’s Office. “People are willing to stop, listen and learn because they realize it can happen.”
Parish President Kevin Davis said that for similar exercises before Katrina, “I’d typically hear ‘Do I really have to go.’ This year, I didn’t get one of those.”
Davis, whose home in Slidell was heavily flooded, lived in the operations center at the old parish courthouse for days after Katrina. He said Thursday’s exercise brought back memories such as parish workers answering calls during the storm, “when the phones still worked,” and taking down the addresses of people trapped in flooded houses.
“From the addresses, our people knew their homes had flooded too,” Davis said. “But they kept on working.”
At a briefing for elected officials during the drill, Davis said he has fond memories of the teamwork displayed among different agencies and the heroism of their workers as they rescued and helped residents.
Thursday’s drill also “brings back sad memories of citizens who lost everything, including their homes and loved ones,” he said.
Intensifying efforts
The exercise was the parish’s first since Katrina and the last before the hurricane season that begins June 1. But Davis said local emergency response officials have been doing active reviews of Katrina for months to prepare for future hurricanes.
The major thing that local officials learned from Katrina is “we have to be ready to take care of ourselves and our citizens for at least 14 days,” Davis said.
For past hurricanes, the parish had supplies to be self-sufficient for three to five days. For this and future hurricane seasons, steps have been taken, Davis said, for the parish and its residents to fend for themselves for at least two weeks.
Underground fuel storage tanks to power generators and equipment are being installed at parish road maintenance barns. Truck trailers filled with MREs and bottled water will be available for shelters throughout St. Tammany, Davis said.
Heavy equipment will be deployed to key locations so it will be ready to clear roads and take rescue workers where they’re needed, he said.
Two large generators for the parish’s 911 emergency telephone service and the emergency operations center will be installed about 1½ blocks away from the old courthouse on St. John Lane, parish Chief Administrative Officer Bill Oiler said.
In the past, the parish has rented or leased additional generators to power emergency operations. The new, more powerful generators -- which can be activated by remote control -- will provide additional backup to mobile generators at the operations center.
The Covington City Council on Wednesday gave the parish the green light to use a sliver of city property for a small building to house the new generators.
Davis said the parish has moved to alleviate the communications problems experienced after Katrina. Additional two-way radios, the only communication mode that worked in St. Tammany after the storm, have been purchased for emergency responders, he said.
The parish also will have the capability to send Internet messages via satellite signal to residents, Davis said, and steps have been taken to ensure information from the parish can get to local radio stations for dissemination to residents.
“The hope is we will never see another storm like Katrina in our lifetime,” Davis said. But if another Katrina hits, “I have full confidence in the people here,” he said. “They’ll be here. And they’ll be energized and ready to go.”
Dangerous prediction
One national hurricane expert has forecast a busy storm season with nine named hurricanes, including five major storms.
Frank Revitte, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Slidell, said that the probability of a hurricane hitting somewhere on the Gulf Coast this season is 47 percent, compared with 30 percent in normal years.
Revitte, during a presentation to the elected officials during the exercise, said the damage caused by Katrina in St. Tammany could have been much worse had its track shifted only slightly to the west.
Katrina created a 10- to 16-foot storm surge in eastern St. Tammany and a 7- to 10-foot surge in western St. Tammany, he said. Had the storm shifted just 40 miles to the west, the surge across St. Tammany would have been 15 to 20 feet, he said.