St. Mary Parish OEP readies for hurricane season

By COLIN MURPHEY
Next week is Hurricane Preparedness Week, and with the start of the 2016 hurricane season right around the corner, officials in St. Mary continue to ready the parish for what is predicted to be a slightly more active than usual storm season.
According to experts at the Weather Channel and Colorado State University, cited in an article on the Weather Channel website, the average number of named storms sits at 12; the average number of hurricanes has been set at six and the number of predicted storms to reach a Category 3 or higher is three.
And while researchers at CSU are predicting the total number of named storms to be 13, one higher than the average, their forecast for storms of a Category 3 or higher is slightly down to two. However, the experts at the Weather Channel are expecting the number of Category 3 or higher storms to be three during the 2016 season.
Though the past several years have been relatively quiet in the area (there were no major hurricanes in 2013 and only two major hurricanes in 2014 and 2015, none of which threatened St. Mary Parish), authorities are not taking any chances in regards to hurricane preparations.
Duval Arthur with the St. Mary Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness said that, while forecasts are useful, preparations for hurricane season are not based on prediction models. Hurricane preparations in St. Mary Parish are based on lessons learned from history.
“It only takes one,” Arthur said. “Hurricane predictions can say we are going to have a weak season. They could say we are going to only have one or two storms. In 1992, they predicted six named storms and only four hurricanes and only one major hurricane. Guess what? In 1992 we got (Hurricane) Andrew.”
Arthur said one of the new resources implemented recently, besides three new flood prevention measures, was a new way to alert the public about emergencies. He said the only thing holding back the effectiveness of the new alert system was getting people to sign up.
Arthur said the new “Code Red” alert system will already work for anyone with a landline telephone. Increasingly though, many members of the parish only have cellular service and that is why the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness needs people to sign up on their website.
“I’m very pleased with our new alert system,” Arthur said. “We need people to go to our website and sign up. We also want people to know that it’s important to let family members know where you are going in case of an evacuation. Let them know, if we are going to evacuate, where you are going to go.”
He encouraged residents of the parish to visit the website to sign up for the new alert system. The website address is www.stmaryohsep.org and the link to the CodeRed Emergency Notification System can be found there.
Arthur said, regardless of predictions or forecasts, hurricane preparations by resources within St. Mary Parish go forward as planned. He said authorities in the region plan for what could happen, not what is predicted to happen.
“We do these things every hurricane season,” Arthur said. “Those are just predictions. Nothing is etched in stone. It’s guesswork. We can’t go to the bank with that. We have to prepare for every hurricane season as if we are going to get 20 storms. We can’t base anything on predictions. We have to be prepared. So that’s what we do. We prepare.”