Your news, sports and entertainment leader for Evangeline Parish, La.

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Portions of Ville Platte remained under water on Saturday afternoon after the city and Evangeline Parish experienced heavy amounts of rain fall on Friday night and early Saturday morning. (Gazette photo by Monique Fontenot)

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Portions of Ville Platte remained under water on Saturday afternoon after the city and Evangeline Parish experienced heavy amounts of rain fall on Friday night and early Saturday morning. (Gazette photo by Elizabeth West)

Historic flooding

Breaking News
Parts of Evangeline Parish have 20 inches of rain fall over weekend

By: Raymond Partsch III
Managing Editor

Evangeline Parish found itself under water this weekend as an historic flooding engulfed the state of Louisiana.
The parish experienced severe levels of flooding from the thunderstorms that came through the area on Friday and Saturday. The storms and flooding were so severe that Gov. John Bel Edwards declared a state of emergency for the entire state on Friday.
Local and state authorities asked residents to stay off the roads as more rain was expected to fall on the parish Saturday night and Sunday morning. The parish remained under a flash flood watch until 7 a.m. Sunday, August 14th. The Evangeline Parish Police Jury President Ryan Ardoin set a curfew for parish residents of 6 p.m. Saturday until 6 a.m. on Sunday.
Ville Platte Mayor Jennifer Vidrine said in a statement released on Saturday, “SAFETY FIRST!! SAFETY FIRST!! Let’s do what our grandparents did in bad weather – PRAY, WATCH & SING, then PRAY, WATCH & SING AGAIN until the bad weather passes.”
According to data from the National Weather Service, a large portion of the City of Ville Platte and Mamou had eight to 12 inches of rain in span of less than 24 hours. The section of Ville Platte located on Chataignier Road heading towards Point Blue received as much 20 inches of rain, as did the village of Chataignier.
That amount of precipitation caused a slew of road closures throughout the parish including, US 167 from two miles east of Ville Platte LA 749, US 167 from I-49 to Ville Platte, LA 748 (north of US 167), US 167 at LA 3042, LA 363 from 1169 all the way to the St. Landry line and LA 95 from LA 28 to LA 758.
The heavy amount of rain also caused several businesses to shut its doors over the weekend. Local residents reported that businesses on the west side of Ville Platte had at least a foot of water inside their buildings on Saturday morning. The parking lot at Champagne’s Market on Tate Cove Road took on so much water on Saturday that the grocery store was forced to close its doors.
It was also reported that houses in the Shady Acres subdivision reportedly had water inside of them by Saturday morning and a large section of Main Street in Ville Platte had been barricaded off by Ville Platte Police Department and Evangeline Parish Sheriff’s Office.
Evangeline Parish School Board Superintendent Toni Hamlin announced Saturday that all public schools in the parish would be closed on Monday.

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