HARAHAN, La. — Resources from Southeast Louisiana continue to head East, to places Louisianans may have never been to, but can certainly relate to.
“I think people’s desire, they just want to go help because they know how pressured everybody is there, and they need relief,” said Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng.
Firefighters from Jefferson Parish are part of that relief. They’re part of a strike team helping with emergencies in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton. Lee Sheng says having them in Florida is mutually beneficial.
“I promise you they’ll come back, and they’ll learn more about how we can better respond with what they experienced there, how we can better respond for our next storm,” said Lee Sheng.
She says that’s also true for members of Jefferson Protection and Animal Welfare Services. They were just in Georgia and North Carolina helping with Hurricane Helene relief. Now they’re in Florida.
“We saw a lot of devastation near the landfall zone south of Tampa. There was surge devastation, wind damage,” said Vice President of the United Cajun Navy Brian Trascher.
Trascher says tornadoes ahead of Hurricane Milton were just as devastating as the storm. His organization has been working a lot with search and rescue operations.
“Florida, state government, is just unbelievable with this. They respond very quickly,” said Trascher.
That’s why Trascher says his organization will focus back on Western North Carolina where people are still missing or cut off from supplies because of Hurricane Helene just more than two weeks ago.
“There’s still a lot of people that are desperate for help and I think they’re afraid of falling off the headlines with Milton and with the election coming up and everything,” said Trascher. “They have a long way to go there.”
With no current crisis to deal with at home, Lee Sheng says it’s only a matter of time.
“As these storms come at us, increasingly fast and more volume and more frequency we’re going to have to rely on other communities for help,” said Trascher.
