And while they are still important, new EOC building also top priority
The west bank of St. Charles Parish has no levee protection and the east bank needs to be elevated to the proper height before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers includes the parish in their 100-year flood plan.
“The corp’s goal is to make sure the levee is raised on the east bank of the parish to the required height by 2011,” Tab Troxler, director of the Emergency Operations Center for the parish said. “But we will still have vulnerability even if the levee is built to the proper design and height.”
Troxler says what residents need to know is that a levee doesn’t guarantee 100 percent flood protection.
“Communities are still vulnerable, even with a levee,” he said. “What a levee can do is protect residents during a Category 1 or 2 storm, possibly a 3, but if a Category 4 or 5 storm hits we’re still in harm’s way.”
Troxler says all levees do for residents is reduce the risk of flooding, not eliminate it.
“The corps’ and the National Oceanic Administration’s documentation shows that if Hurricane Katrina would have shifted 40 miles to the west, we would have been underwater just like Orleans Parish and St. Bernard,” he said. “The parish administrators recently took a tour at the National Weather Service center in Slidell and got to witness a SLOSH presentation which shows various dangerous weather scenarios and that was one of them.”
Troxler says Parish President V. J. St. Pierre was very concerned about what he saw and so were the other administrators who attended the conference last month.
“I’ve discussed with Mr. St. Pierre the need for a new Emergency Operations Center in the parish, and he has been supportive and very concerned,” he said. “There are other projects that have to come first like pump projects and levees, but within the next seven to 10 years we need to have a new EOC.”
Troxler remembers being cramped in the quarters in the basement during Katrina and says he’d like a new facility to house all of the key personnel that have to stay behind in the parish.
“If there’s another serious storm, we’re going to have to relocate a lot of our essential parish workers at least 240 miles away,” Troxler said. “We’ve made an agreement with west Baton Rouge Parish to send our workers to a facility there. We already know for sure that we’re going to have to have at least 100 workers stay behind.”
Troxler says the current facility won’t be able to house them comfortably.
“Right now there are only about eight workers that stay at the facility comfortably,” he said. “When the parish needs to house that many workers in cramped quarters, you run in to hygiene and other issues.”
Troxler says that construction of a new EOC would cost the parish around $9 million.
“We did receive a homeland security grant to purchase a new generator,” he said. “Last time around the generator failed us twice.”
Troxler said the new generator will definitely be put to good use.
“We’re also in the process of applying for a grant to purchase a 750 kilowatt generator,” he said. “This generator would be able to supply electricity to the entire courthouse.”
Troxler says the workers will be housed within a four hour distance so they can return to the parish quickly to assist once the crisis has past.
“We’ve just recently added a Black Board Connect CTY system to our emergency alert system,” he said. “What it does is allows us to send text messaging and email alerts to all residents.”
Troxler says residents can register their cell phone numbers to receive the messages on the St. Charles Parish government Internet site.
“Last time around we had residents who wanted to be kept informed about what was going on in the parish after they had evacuated,” he said. “Mr. St. Pierre and I think that we can do a better job and make some improvements on keeping residents informed when they’re forced to go miles away from home.”
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