St. Tammany News

Leaders keeping close eye on disorganizing system

It's not a hurricane or a tropical depression, and it has no name assigned to it, but a weather system brewing in the Gulf of Mexico could grow in fury as it heads toward the Gulf Coast. This has prompted local emergency management officials to stand guard. All weather models projected the storm, which hovered over warm waters near Fort Myers, Fla., Thursday morning, to make landfall between southeastern Louisiana and the western Florida Panhandle during the next three days after crossing the warm Gulf waters where it should gain strength. All eyes have been focused on the storm, with some tracks predicting direct contact with the New Orleans area, said meteorologist Phil Grigsby at the National Weather Service station in Slidell.

But "it's very disorganized," Grigsby said Thursday morning. "With the surface water temperature high, we're just going to have to wait and see."

A dry air front, particularly coming from Louisiana which is rare for this time of year, is "basically swinging around the Gulf and headed right into the heart of the system, hampering any explosive growth as of yet," Grigsby said.

The National Weather Service briefed St. Tammany Parish emergency officials Thursday, prompting Parish President Kevin Davis to raise the parish emergency activation meter to level 3.

"We need to prepare as if it were already formed," Davis said.

On Thursday, the parish Public Works department checked sand bag availability, drained some retention ponds and met with local municipalities, American Red Cross and St. Tammany Parish School Board officials to establish shelters.

The parish's department of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness is monitoring the situation round-the-clock, prepared to hunker down in the Covington's newly renovated $5.4-million Emergency Operations Center in Covington.

The new center, dubbed the "war room" by governmental officials, sports black laptops for more than 30 emergency responders and a bevy of outside communications lines from HAM and satellite radios to hospital and state-operated emergency radio frequencies.

"I don't think we'll have another blackout," Davis has said referring to the "black hole" of communication that engulfed the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. "I think we're ready in any storm event."

Temporary trailers are also a concern throughout hurricane-ravaged south Louisiana, especially in Slidell, where hundreds still dot the landscape more than two years after Katrina. The trailers aren't made to withstand strong winds that a tropical storm or hurricane may produce.

"I want to urge all citizens living in travel trailers and mobile homes to be prepared to evacuate if a tropical storm comes our way," Davis said. "If I call for an evacuation for those living in mobile structures or low-lying areas, shelters will be opened."

Slidell, where 10 feet of flooding swamped the city during Katrina, suffered the brunt of destruction in St. Tammany Parish. Mayor Ben Morris called a meeting with Slidell Police Chief Freddy Drennan, Fire Protection District No. 1 Chief Larry Hess and other emergency personnel to formulate a game plan if the weather system rumbles toward Louisiana.

"We are going to follow the parish's lead," Slidell Chief of Staff Bob Dunbar said. "Everything is on standby, and we will just wait and see."

Davis emphasized the protection measures are precautionary, and residents in travel trailers, mobile homes and low-lying areas should recheck their evacuation plans.

"We are not panicky, but it is always a good idea to have a plan in place," said Slidell spokesman Paul Bartels.