2011 High Water – Ten

Today there was a mass meeting of emergency personnel at the Butte La Rose store, down near the boat landing. I parked a little way from it and just watched for a couple minutes. There must have been a hundred people spread out in small groups of four or five, all engaged in what appeared to be very serious conversations. Some carried clipboards and wrote things on them, checklists were checked and to-do items crossed off or completed as I watched. Some carried little notebook computers and fingers swept over keyboards or pecked the keys one at a time. One person who had to be a higher-up in the mix of agencies literally hurried from one small group to another, stopping only long enough to exchange a word or two and get a nod in return. The whole thing looked somewhat disorganized, but not chaotic. You could see that all these people had a part in the flood response, though some seemed to know their role well and others were looking for clarification.

I found some people from the Louisiana Dept. of Environmental Quality. They were here to pass the word to homeowners that any hazardous materials could be placed at the roadside and a contractor would pick them up. I think they were actually going from house to house putting notices on doors or speaking to the residents if they were at home. The timing might have been better if this had been done last week or the week before, since almost no one with a house in Butte La Rose is still here. We had the usual collection of old, partially filled paint cans and I gathered them and put them out as requested. There were some old gasoline containers too. They were gone an hour later – so fast! I had the feeling that the contractor who picked them up was watching me, knowing I was one of the few people who knew about the hazardous pickup, and when I appeared at the curb they pounced on the paint cans, thereby justifying the contract they had with the state. I am being cynical, but actually I’m glad somebody thought of doing this.

The water continued today to not rise. It has been about the same for the last four days. The media and the authorities continue to warn that even though the river is not rising as fast as predicted, it will rise to unprecedented levels in the next seven days. It surely is not a good time to let your guard down and become complacent. But you can see in the reports that there is concern that all of this might have been overhyped. Still, it is better to expect too much and not get it then to downplay the significance of high water and have people be unprepared. There certainly was sufficient warning this time.

The river is at 21.04 feet on the Butte La Rose gauge, rising to 25 feet in the next five days. Hopefully it will begin to flatten out after that. I wish we could watch it when it is that high. But we will have to leave Saturday morning.

Rise and Shine, Jim