JEFFERSON PARISH, La. — The east bank of Jefferson Parish is still under a boil water advisory.
And while parish officials are looking into when the advisory can be lifted, they are also trying to figure out why many of you never got the alerts Thursday night.
There are 160 Jefferson Parish east bank water samples that are being tested in the lab now. The results are expected back between 6 a.m. and noon Saturday. If they come back OK, the boil water advisory will be lifted.
The newly opened CR coffee shop on Metairie Road decided to stay closed today rather than go through all efforts during a boil water advisory.
While a block or two away, PJ's Coffee is living with some of the inconveniences.
Friendly customers offer to go buy bagged ice for the shop, but next-day preps will have to change.
“Tonight, I might not be able to make ice coffees for tomorrow. Not having some ice coffee tomorrow is going to be inconvenient. We'll still have our granitos and stuff like that, but our cold brew coffees, like not so much,” said Jennifer Fishe, manager of Metairie Road PJ’s Coffee.
Over at the airport, thirsty passengers have to buy bottled water. All water fountains in the terminal are closed. In the bathrooms, it's okay to use the facets to wash hands to protect from the spread of germs. The main issue is ingesting the water in case there is a problem.
What happened Thursday night to cause the issue was the perfect storm. The storm hit and caused multiple power surges to shut off backup generators for three minutes at the water plant.
Normally, the water towers would compensate for the pressure drop, but one of the two towers is offline for service. So, to be safe until the water quality is tested, the boil water advisory was issued. Still, there was another issue.
“The JP Alert system was not used. Reverse 911 was used, under a decision by the EOC to geo-target the entire east bank, so that the biggest number of people could find out at once what was going on,” explained Scott Walker, Jefferson Parish Councilman-at-large.
But a lot of people never got the phone alert from the reverse 911 system.
“These systems have gaps in them. If you look at the national emergency operations system, and the text alert system, there are gaps there as well, where people are missed on cell phones. So, it's still a work in progress,” Walker said.
Officials are looking into why everyone didn't get the Reverse 911 alert, and they promise next time to also include the text JP Alert system that you sign up for.
While they try to figure out why everyone did not get the Reverse 911 alert, you can do two things. Sign up for the voluntary alerts. To do so text JP Alert to 888777 and make sure you don't have your emergency alerts turned off.
For more information about the boil water advisory, visit Jefferson Parish's website here.
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