JEFFERSON PARISH, La. — The best way to go into hurricane season is to be prepared, and Jefferson Parish is doing just that.
Monday, the parish held a practice evacuation with local and state agencies. The evacuation is for anyone who doesn't have transportation or a way out of town should a hurricane come our way and the parish issue a mandatory evacuation. During Monday's practice run, they explained exactly how a real evacuation would work.
"It’s a lot of conversations with people and physically setting up what’s the best kind of operation, how are we going to move people through this building, what different agencies are going to be set up where that’s critical and kind of getting out all the kinks. We want this to be as smooth as possible if we have to implement this," Parish President Cynthia Lee Sheng said. "the more everybody from different agencies and different departments have a working relationship with one another the smoother it’s going to be if we have to implement this."
If you live in Jefferson Parish and need help getting out in case of a hurricane, you can catch a bus at a bus stop. The bus would then drive you to a processing center, where the employees would determine what assistance you would need, whether that's medical services, special needs, or you have a pet. Then, they would determine the best way to get you out.
"We have a lot of people processing people here. obviously, we need to keep track of who’s getting on the bus, who has special needs, who might be able to take a flight from here, and certainly, we allow people with pets to come here," Lee Sheng said.
Officials say it's important to actually practice the plan they have in place to make sure it goes as smoothly as possible if the time comes for them to implement it. The parish is also taking what they learned from past storms, like Hurricane Ida, and implementing them into their plan, like who they need to help and how they can help them. Jefferson Parishes Director of Emergency Management, Joe Valiente, says the country's population is getting older.
"We have 76 million baby boomers in the country that’s the age now 55-75. So from a demographics standpoint, we’re getting older, and that means special needs, so we’re able to understand that from Ida," Valiente said. "We are more proactive about the assisted living facilities in Jefferson parish. We are identifying individuals in those facilities that don’t have any relatives and don’t have any way to evacuate. We will pick them up and bring them to the public-assisted evacuation."
Another lesson they learned is that hurricanes are approaching and changing more rapidly, which means everyone has less lead time to prepare, evacuate, and put the plan into place.
"Every storm is different, but what we know is mother nature is throwing these at us much quicker, and it doesn’t give us the services we’d like to provide if we had 96 hours or if we had that type of time," Lee Sheng said. "It makes it more complicated really for all our table top exercises, everything we’re doing it really does complicate things. But for our residents to know that you have to be prepared to go quickly and get out early because timelines are compressed. This waiting to the last minute or waiting until they call contraflow is not how you want to be thinking."
Officials say they want to help you stay safe, but to do that, you need to be weather-aware. Knowing what's going on and having a way to get alerts is critical to getting out early.
"Just make sure you’re weather aware because if you’re aware, you’re more likely to make better decisions. Another thing we’ve learned is we have to do a better job at making sure the public understands the level of threats because of rapid intensification we’re looking ta storms that are more powerful and drop a lot of rain," Valiente said.
You can sign up for Jefferson Parish text alerts by texting JPALERT to 888777. If you need them in Spanish, you can text JPNOTICIAS to 888777.
If you have medical needs that prevent you from catching the bus, you can register online at jeffparish.net, and they will coordinate a pick-up for you.
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