We’re Pumped!

Parish survives heaviest rain in 6 years with

Heavy downpours on Oct. 22 prompted Greg Bush, director of the Public Works and Wastewater department in St. Charles Parish, to put all public works and wastewater work crews on alert to man critical pump stations overnight.

Bush says there was street flooding parish-wide and exactly where a resident lives would determine the amount of time the water stayed in the area.

“In some areas, the street flooding lasted as little as 15 minutes,” Bush said. “In others, it was as long as 45 minutes.”

Bush says the rainfall wasn’t unexpected, but the amount was surprising.

“In the six years I’ve been director, I’ve never seen rainfall affect so many different parts of the parish at the same time,” he said. “Usually, the heavy rain brings spots of flooding to certain parts of the parish. This rain event was widespread.”

Tab Troxler, director of the Emergency Operations Center in Hahnville, says the rain  exceeded four inches parish-wide.

“We activated our emergency plan, which means placing all staff agencies on alert due to a flash flood warning in the area,” Troxler said.

As part of the team, Bush along with a crew of 140 workers, made sure the parish worked until morning to keep the area monitored for flooding and sewage overflows.

“We enacted part of our emergency plan and had workers at the pump stations manning the pumps,” Bush said. “The rain affected both sides of the parish on the east and west banks.”

Bush says that when catch basins and drainage ditches filled up with debris, parish workers were on the site removing the deluge to prevent dangerous street flooding.

“We had over 100 people cleaning out the catch basins and culverts,” he said. “The bar screens came in handy and were put to good use last night.”

Bush said whenever there’s a large amount of rainfall it infiltrates the sewer system, potentially causing overflows at lift stations and manhole covers.  At lift stations,  red lights also flashed, which indicates a potential problem  that needs to be inspected.

“We had residents calling to notify the EOC office when a red light would go off and we sent our crews to take care of the situation and make sure the pumps were working properly in that area,” he said. “We had a little bit of a problem last night in different spots in the parish with an overflow of sewage into the streets in some areas.”

Troxler says residents were notified via the telephone alert system about the flash flood warning in the parish.

“We got a few calls about  some problems with flooding in the Norco/New Sarpy area that had gone into a couple of homes, but it was mostly in areas like the garage or a patio area,” he said. “Our role is to make sure the proper parish authorities handle these kinds of emergency situations.”