Hurricane Gustav
Parish prepared as evacuees fled storm
MICHELLE BATES, Editor
Emergency
public officials geared up for Hurricane Gustav, which struck just west of New Orleans in Cocodrie on Monday morning.
All
emergency personnel geared up for the storm as evacuees rolled in late Friday
and early Saturday morning. Camp Harris was opened as an official evacuee site
at approximately 10 a.m. On Saturday morning, officials beat the pavement to
make sure the evacuees were taken care of.
Claiborne
Parish Homeland Security Director Dennis Butcher said that evacuees from as far
south as St. Bernard to Calcasieu Parish were staying at Camp Harris. They were put up in rooms and travel trailers at the camp site. As of Monday morning,
the camp was filled to capacity, which means approximately 200 to 250 people
are housed there. Butcher estimates that 600-800 evacuees are now being housed
in Claiborne Parish, and they are in a “wait and see” mode. With the weather coming
in off Gustav, winds were expected to be approximately 30-45 mph with tropical
storm force gusts.
“It
appears that we escaped the worst of the weather,” Butcher said. “Trees are
continuing to fall. The parish has removed in access of 30 trees since midnight Monday, and we’re expecting them to keep falling. The parish has done an
excellent job of keeping the roads clear.”
Special
thanks goes out to all the volunteers who have put their time and effort into
helping the evacuees.
Butcher
expects evacuees to stay at least through the weekend, just to make sure it is
safe to return home. Many are awaiting word from the governor to advise when it
will be safe to go home.
According
to Scott Greeson, Claiborne 911 director, the Louisiana National Guard at Camp Minden donated MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) as back up if the food supply slimmed down.
Approximately 1,000 meals were donated.
Also,
evacuees have headed as far north as Haynesville in hopes of finding a place to
stay. The Claiborne Parish Fairgrounds were opened to evacuees. There are
approximately 70 evacuees in Haynesville between the fairgrounds and Tom
Crocker’s RV site.
By
executive order of Gov. Bobby Jindal, all schools in several northern parishes,
including Claiborne, were shut down through Wednesday, so that the buses would
be available for evacuee transport. Also, with shelters filling up to capacity,
the schools were looked at as possible evacuation sites. As of press time, no
schools in Claiborne Parish were opened as a shelter.
Louisiana
State School Superintendent Paul G. Pastorek ordered all schools in the
southern and coastal areas to reposition their buses to higher ground. Schools
were ordered to shut the doors and board up by the close of school Friday
afternoon.
The
mandatory evacuation began Sunday morning with contraflow (all highway and
interstate lanes go northbound) on both sides of the state heading northward.
In some
schools along the coast and other areas in South Louisiana, schools were
distributing hard copies of student cumulative records just in case the
students were not able to immediately return. This way, it would be easier for
students to register for school wherever they may have evacuated to, if that
need arose.
On
Sunday, President George Bush held a press conference from the FEMA office in Washington, D.C. to announce his plans to skip the Republican National Convention going
on this week in St. Paul, MN. He said much preparation had gone into making
sure people were safe from the effects of Gustav. He urged the American people
to pull together and help their neighbors.
“Know
that the American people stand with you,” Bush said to the evacuees, “that
we’ll face this emergency together.” To the rest of the nation, he said, “I
urge you to help our neighbors in need. I urge you to pray for those who are
suffering.”
He
headed to Texas Monday morning to a staging area where he was expected to
monitor the storm.
In a
press conference from Baton Rouge that same afternoon, Gov. Bobby Jindal gave
updates throughout the day, urging those straggling behind to take heed to the
mandatory evacuation. The evacuation plan set forth ran like a well-oiled
machine, with nearly 2 million people heading north to avoid the storm. That’s
the largest evacuation in the history of Louisiana, he said.
Gustav
made landfall Monday morning as a Category 2 hurricane in Cocodrie. Some of the
levees in New Orleans were overtopped by the storm surge, sending water into a
city that is below sea level, but overall the levees held.
North
Louisiana is expected to see heavy rains
through Thursday, according to weather reports, and several advisories are in
effect including flash flooding, and wind advisories.
Helpful phone numbers
•
Claiborne Animal Clinic: 318-927-9323
•
Claiborne Chamber of Commerce: 318-927-3271
•
Claiborne DART: 318-927-2818
•
Claiborne Emergency Preparedness: 318-927-9400
•
Claiborne Parish Health Unit: 318-927-6127
•
Claiborne Parish Office of Community Services: 318-927-3557
•
Claiborne Parish Public Library, Haynesville: 318-624-0364
• Claiborne
Parish Public Library, Homer: 318-927-3845
• Claiborne Parish School Board: 318-927-3502
•
Claiborne Parish Sheriff’s Office: 318-927-2011
•
Department of Veterans Affairs, Minden: 318-371-3045
• Haynesville City Hall: 318-624-0911
•
Haynesville Police Department: 318-624-1311
• Homer City Hall: 318-927-3555
• Homer Memorial Hospital: 318-927-2024
• Homer
Police Department: 318-927-4001
• Homer
Post Office: 318-927-927-3824
• Lake Claiborne State Park: 318-927-2976
•
Louisiana Department of Social Services, Homer: 318-927-3518
• Minden Mental Health Clinic: 318-371-3001
•
National Weather Service, Shreveport: 318-631-3669
•
Office of Homeland Security, Homer: 318-927-9118
•
Public Transportation: 318-927-3557
•
Social Security, Minden Office: 318-377-7387
Haynesville highly praised for
hospitality
JENNI WILLIAMS, The Guardian-Journal
Evacuees
that headed to the Haynesville area could not give enough praise to the
officials who are helping take care of them while they are here.
“We
give our thanks to the mayor, councilmen, the Fire Department,” Johnny LeBlanc,
from Jeanerette, Iberia Parish, said. “We are very proud of them.”
LeBlanc said the many people who
stopped by have gone above and beyond the call of duty.
Mayor
Sherman Brown and Fire Chief Mark Furlow, along with his family, visited the
families as they arrived at the Claiborne Parish Fairgrounds over the weekend.
A total of 12 RVs and campers were stationed at the site.
After
discovering that a few of the electrical posts in the park were not in working
order, a call was placed to CSJ Electrical, out of Haynesville, who stayed
until after 8:30 p.m. to insure everything was up and working.
“They’ve
been very helpful. We have a lot to be thankful for,” Shane and Annette
Milligan, also from Iberia Parish, said.
The
families looked like they were just friends on a vacation. Enjoying Cajun food
prepared on their outdoor grills, sitting around a picnic table in their lawn
chairs, but in the back of their minds, wondering what they were going home to.
LeBlanc and his family had just
moved into their new home one week ago. They had previously lost everything to
Katrina.
“We
can’t just sit here and watch the TV. It would drive you crazy,” he said.
The
many families here are occasionally checking in with family members that chose
to stay behind. During the interview, Gustav was just 30 minutes from reaching
their homes. The evacuees later learned that Iberia and St. Mary parishes were
some of the hardest hit areas.
Many
evacuees also relocated to the RV park located on Goodwin Lake Road at Tom
Crocker’s place. J.D. Herrell, of New Iberia, has been coming to the
Haynesville area for several years to hunt with Crocker and knew that he would
have a welcome place to stay.
Herrell,
and wife, Mary, helped to secure a safe place for many members of their family
and friends. Some of which belong to a group called the Poor Boy Cruizin’
Cajuns.
Everyone
at the site wanted to thank Crocker for his helpfulness and opening his home to
them. Crocker was waiting to help in any way he could when the convoy of
campers converged on his land at 3 a.m. Sunday. He told everyone that if the
weather got too bad, to join him in his home.
“You
never know what you’re going home to. It’s distressing and your kids pick up on
that,” Sherry Richie, also of New Iberia, said. The parents of the dozen or
more children here are trying to keep a brave front.
After
fleeing a coming hurricane, they were now being told to be on the watch for
tornadoes, which is not something they had much experience with.
The
children can find many things to do here including fishing in Crocker’s pond,
exploring the nearby woods and playing in the passenger car and caboose from a
train Crocker has on the property.
The
evacuees wanted to thank Crocker’s church, First Baptist of Haynesville, for
bringing out food on Sunday evening.
Trash Bash Saturday, Sept. 6
Litter fighters will meet at 8 a.m. through 3 p.m. on Oil Mill Road between the old cotton warehouses and housing
apartments. This is available to Homer citizens only. Please be prepared to
show ID. Accepted items include metal and white goods (refrigerators and
washing machines, etc.) and regular trash. No limbs accepted unless bundled in
6 fot. long pieces. For more information, please call the Town of Homer’s Clean City Committee at 927-3271 or 927-2342.
Hospital, nursing homes housing evacuees
MICHELLE BATES, Editor
Homer Memorial Hospital is
now at capacity since taking in almost 100 medical patients who evacuated South Louisiana.
“We
have medical transfers, and the hospital is full,” said Doug Efferson, hospital
administrator. “The hospital has received a number of patients, which means
we’re pretty much at capacity.”
There
are also nurses from south Louisiana who are helping out at the hospital as
well, he said. Homer hospital has 10 patients from Abbeville General Hospital in Vermillion Parish, and a total of eight at the Senior Care Center in Haynesville –
two from Grand Isle in Jefferson Parish and six from East Jefferson General Hospital in Jefferson Parish.
Homer Memorial Hospital is
part of the Region 7 plan developed three years ago in the wake of Hurricane
Katrina. It is a part of the regional network connected with Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport. As part of that plan,
medical patients were moved a day ahead of the mass evacuation.
“It
worked tremendously,” Efferson said. “It was calm, and it worked exactly like
it was supposed to. We had two days of planning before the hurricane hit.”
As part
of that plan, area nursing homes were expected to be at full capacity, taking
in residents from south Louisiana.
In
Claiborne Parish, Clint DeLoach, an LPN at Presbyterian Village Nursing Home,
said there are no evacuees housed there at this time, but the administrator
made preparations to take them in if the need arose.
Suzonne
Loe, administrator of the Heritage Nursing Center in Haynesville, also said
they are not housing any evacuees.
Claiborne
Manor Administrator Shannon Boyd said they are housing evacuees, and are at
capacity. Right now, approximately 80 patients are at the facility.
“We
took in evacuees from our sister facility in south Louisiana,” she said. “We
took in patients from four different facilities. We took all high care, oxygen
dependent patients, from Jennings, Crowley, Broussard and Lafayette.”
All the
patients were in good condition when they arrived, and the Acadian Ambulance
Service did a great job getting them here, Boyd said.
When
patients and nursing home residents begin to return home, Efferson said that
should work as smoothly as the evacuation did.
“The
game plan is to reverse it as soon as the governor says so,” he said. “We’ll
see if it works as well as it did with them coming up here.”
Efferson
was expected to go on duty Monday afternoon in order to prepare the hospital
for the incoming weather. This will be the big test of the new 400 kilowatt
generator to see how well it runs the hospital on its own. He was confident the
generator would hold its own if the need arose.
The
generator is expected to run all necessary equipment at the hospital and allow
it to function as close to normal as possible.
Family compares evacuations then and now
The Guardian-Journal photo/Jenni Williams
The young boy, Terry, age 6, (pictured
far right) still suffers trauma from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
JENNI WILLIAMS, The Guardian-Journal
A
family now sheltered at Camp Harris compared the evacuation of south Louisiana in anticipation of Hurricane Gustav to the botched preparations from Katrina and
Rita, and how it effected them as a family.
Amanda,
James and their three children, Terry, 6, Kassidy 4, and Angela, 2 from Moss
Bluff, a neighborhood in Lake Charles were grateful to find this kind of
shelter after some of the ones they were relocated to during Hurricane
Katrina.
Camp Harris was named as
a official shelter for those fleeing Hurricane Gustav. The camp opened on
Saturday morning for evacuees needing a place to call home this week.
First
relocated to Camp Harris on Friday night, the family discovered that Camp Harris was not open yet, so returned to Love’s Truck Stop off I-20 in Minden. The family spent the night, awake, with Amanda’s brother-in-law’s four children and
three other nieces and nephews for a total of 10 children in one camper in the
parking lot.
After
finding out they could return to Camp Harris on Saturday after 7 a.m., they left Minden early to come to Homer, where the entire family got much needed
sleep.
Their
plans were to remain at Camp Harris until advised they could return home.
The
family, who had just moved into their new home in Lake Charles right before
Katrina, lost everything from that storm. They are still dealing with the
aftereffects.
Terry
was tentatively diagnosed as having Attention Deficit HyperActivity Disorder
(ADHD) at the time of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. He was hugely traumatized
from the things he saw in its aftermath.
He is
not handling the evacuation very well, his mother said, believing he will
return home to nothing a second time. His nervousness and anxiety is making his
two little sisters afraid.
He
witnessed things in the shelters that a child should never have to see.
Beatings and men raping other men in bathrooms, armed forces having to guard
shelters with machine guns, and to top it off, absolutely nothing to go home
to.
Terry
is still afraid of the dark and any kind of thunder. Amanda’s older brother,
who is a member of the armed forces, must change out of fatigues before
visiting his nephew, because if Terry sees him in fatigues, he will cower in a
corner.
The
things he saw and experienced during those traumatic days after Katrina make it
twice as hard on his parents. The family is trying to deal with a son with
these medical issues and keep all the children safe and secure.
To add
even more on Amanda’s shoulders, Terry only has enough medicine to last until
Thursday.
Amanda
says this evacuation, even though they had to return to Minden for the first
night, is a totally different story from their experience three years ago.
The
family is in a safe place, not having to move from shelter to shelter and are
allowed to stay at Camp Harris until time to head home.
“Last
time was as bad as it gets,” Amanda said. The family had their own vehicle this
time, which seemed to make a big difference. “We feel more in control this
time. The worst part isn’t the hurricane, it’s the fears that Terry has after
what he saw in Katrina.”
Physical altercation leads to several
arrests
The Guardian-Journal
Several
people were arrested last week after an altercation became physical.
Tracey
M. Willis, 18, of Homer, was charged with interference with police, flight from
an officer, two counts of battery of a police officer, disturbing the peace,
resisting an officer and public intimidation. Bond on each charge was set at
$500, totaling a bond of $3,500.
Paula
Willis, 38, of Homer, was charged with resisting an officer, disturbing the
peace – profanity, and interference with police. Bond for her was set at $500
on each charge, totaling a bond of $1,500.
Kashara
Cooper, 19, of Lisbon, was charged with criminal damage to property, disturbing
the peace – fighting, interference with police and resisting an officer. Bond
on each charge was set at $500, totaling $2,000.
Keyora
Parrish, 19, of Homer, was charged with criminal damage to property, disturbing
the peace and riot. Bond on each of those charges was set at $500 each, for a
total of $1,500.
According
to police reports, the Homer Police Department was dispatched to the 1200 block
of Jefferson Street in reference to a fight in progress. Upon the arrival of
Officer Joey Henry, he observed one woman, identified as Paula Willis, with a
handgun in her hand. After being told several times to put the gun down, Willis
refused.
Henry
called for backup, and she then put the gun in a vehicle. Officer Mike Rayburn
arrived on scene to assist.
Once
the gun was retrieved by Henry and placed in his patrol car for safety, Tracey
Willis approached cursing at the officer.
Tracey
Willis then reportedly made verbal threats, and after a “brief fight,” the
suspect was arrested. It didn’t end there. While the two officers were in the
process of arresting Tracey Willis, reports say Paula Willis and Tracey’s
girlfriend, Kashara Cooper, tried to prevent the arrest by pulling the officers’
hands away from the suspect.
Once
all three were placed under arrest, the officers began their investigation into
the original altercation. It was reported that Keyora Parrish knocked out
windows and a headlight of a pickup truck – where Willis and his girlfriend
were sitting.
When
Parrish was arrested, reports say she tried to pull away from officers to
continue the fight with the couple.
In an
unrelated incident, a Homer man was arrested on several charges.
On
Monday, August 25, Jared Evans, 23, of Homer, was arrested and charged with
domestic abuse battery and two counts of disturbing the peace. Bond on the
domestic abuse battery was set at $2,000, while bond on the two counts of
disturbing the peace were set at $500 each, totaling $3,000.
According
to reports, Officer Mario Thomas received a phone call at the Homer Police
Department in reference to a disturbance.
When
Thomas arrived on scene, the suspect, later identified as Evans, was leaving
the back door of the residence. Thomas caught up to him and patted him down for
officer’s safety and placed in the patrol car.
Upon
the initial investigation, reports say Evans entered the residence in a
“violent rage,” pushing his girlfriend’s mother. He was also reported to have
cursed at his girlfriend and her mother in the presence of minor children.
He was
arrested and transported to the Claiborne Parish Detention Center.
Haynesville to hold Butterfly Festival Sept. 13
The Guardian-Journal
The
tenth annual Haynesville Celebration of Butterflies, Memorial Butterfly Conservatory,
will be held on September 13 at the Claiborne Parish Fairgrounds in Haynesville, La., the ‘Butterfly Capital of Louisiana.’
Speakers
Norman Winter, horticulturist, Charles Allen, Ph. D., Richard Johnson, curator
of the Caroline Dormon Nature Preserve and Robin Bridges, Claiborne Parish
County Agent, 4-H/ANR, will be in attendance.
Festival
highlights will include the sale of books and t-shirts; a plant sale by Master
Gardeners; community art and photography exhibit;, craft and food vendors;
take-home butterfly towers, complete with caterpillars and food; nature
photography contest; flower exhibit and contest; and a water conservation
display trailer.
Special
events will be held for the children including, bumper to bumper kiddie rides
by James Roach, fun with sports with Beth Franklin and a sidewalk art
competition with Suzy Allen.
Karaoke
will held under the pavilion with Danyell Ruhman and Stephanie Moore.
Sponsors
of the festival are Claiborne Chamber of Commerce, Haynesville Garden Club and
the LSU AgCenter Research and Extension Office.
An
admission price of $2 for adults, $1 for children six to 18 will be charged and
children under six will be free.
For
more information contact Louice Kendrick-Lacy at 624-1929 and (870) 234-4910 or visit the website at www.claiborneone.org/butterfly.html.
Trees fall from saturated ground
The Guardian-Journal photo/Jenni Williams
High winds and excessive rains caused
this large tree to topple over at the corner of Old Cemetery Road and West 3rd St. in Homer.
First Baptist Church to honor parish’s finest on September 11
A program honoring all law enforcement,
firefighters and emergency personnel will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the Family Life Center at First Baptist Church in Homer. The families of all law
enforcement, firefighters and emergency personnel will also be honored. The
guest speaker will be Billy Pierce, retired pastor of Cypress Baptist Church in Benton. He is also the chaplain for the Bossier Parish Sheriff’s Department.
Everyone is invited to attend. For more information, please call the church at
927-3596.
After school program offered
Wesley
chapel is offering a new after school program for children grades one through
six. “All Stars for Jesus” is hosted each Wednesday afternoon from 4 to 6 p.m. at Wesley Chapel located at 3647 Highway 146 in Homer.
Reverend
Pat Bates, Minister of Christian Education for the church, will direct the
program. a team of volunteers will also lead.
Each
child will be served after-school snacks and get help with homework. Then the
children will play games, make crafts and eat a hot meal.
Next,
there will be music and a weekly Bible Lesson that helps each child personally
come to know God through Jesus Christ and make the Bible a part of his or her
everyday life.
The
curriculum is fun and interactive; age appropriate; and Bible story based.
As a
parent, you are invited to visit and observe any or all sessions. Later in the
fall there will be All Stars Family Night when the children will show what they
have learned.
You are
invited and encouraged to pre-register your child by calling the Wesley Chapel
office at 927-9467 so that plenty food and materials are available.
Please
also let us know your child’s name, grade and any food allergies he or she
might have. We will also need parent names and a daytime phone number for
contact.
This Film by Michael Haynes Productions was created in conjunction with 
