Rain, rain go away

Less than a week after a significant portion of Evangeline Parish experienced heavy flooding, the area once again was blasted with severe weather on Wednesday and early Thursday morning.
According to the National Weather Service, Evangeline Parish had anywhere from three inches to all the way up to seven inches of rainfall occur from during the period of Wednesday morning to early Thursday morning. That comes on the heels of the heavy flooding that occurred late last weekend. The National Weather Service estimates that Evangeline Parish received at least 10 inches of rainfall in week from April 27 to May 4, with some areas of the parish receiving upwards of 15 inches of rain.
After shutting down schools early Wednesday, Evangeline Parish School Board Superintendent Darwan Lazard announced the closure of all public schools for Thursday as well, due to the flooded and unsafe road conditions. Sacred Heart of Ville Platte, was also closed on Thursday.
Even with the rash of flooding, there were no fatalities from the past week.
Evangeline Parish Police Jury President Ryan Ardoin praised the efforts of the parish and town workers that aided the community during the severe weather.
“I really like to thank our parish workers who worked long hours to clear the drainage, for blocking off the flooded roads, and filling sandbags,” Ardoin said. “Our 9-1-1 Director Liz Hill kept me updated throughout the day and night. The fire departments put themselves in harms way to help people and we couldn’t have done it without them out there. I did speak to state officials and they told me that they will be sending teams in to the parish to asses all the damage and try to get some funding.”
Hill echoed that same sentiment.
“​Overall I think the parish and municipalities were very well prepared for this storm event,” Hill said. “There were a lot of “behind the scenes” preparedness that maybe the general public didn’t know about. Most agencies had extra staff on standby. Here at 911, we actually had a couple of dispatchers that slept here for fear they would not be able to make it to work the next day due to roads flooded. We were prepared to open a shelter should one be needed.”
Hill added, “I also want to thank all the parish/city officials who worked together and the citizens of Evangeline Parish for heeding the warnings and getting themselves prepared. Job well done.”
This most recent batch of storms of course caused widespread power outages throughout Acadiana, including here in Evangeline Parish. At 5:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Cleco Corp. stated it had 5,488 customers without power across 17 parishes, including 30 in Evangeline Parish. By 9:30 a.m. on Thursday, that number had decreased to roughly 4,000 customers, but the number of those inside the parish had grown to 103.
In a release Thursday, Cleco announced that it had brought in an additional 10 contractor crews to aid with clean-up and restoration of power.
“Yesterday we had Cleco crews and 12 contractor crews working, and today we are bringing in 10 more contractor crews to help with restoration efforts,” said Cleco’s James Lass, who serves as Manager of Distribution Operations and Emergency Management. “We anticipate that over 90 percent of our customers will have power restored today.”
With sunshine in the forecast for days ahead, the flood waters will begin to recede but the efforts to improve the parish’s drainage will only rise in the days and weeks ahead.
“I really would like the public to know that we are continuously working on drainage,” Ardoin said. “We know these big rains are affecting our drainage. We are reaching out to state and federal levels to see what can be done to help create bigger drainage canals to help with the drainage issue. We are in touch with both levels of government and we are not going to stop until we can figure something out.”