PLAQUEMINES PARISH, La. — Plaquemines Parish residents are preparing for Francine which is expected to bring more than 4 inches of rain, winds of up to 65 miles per hour, and 4 to 7 feet of storm surge to the Louisiana coastal parish.
“If they expect high water, everybody’s leaving,” Myrtle Grove resident Villere Reggio said. “You get trapped back here; you’ve got to go.”
Many communities from Venice to Myrtle Grove are under a mandatory evacuation order.
There is also a voluntary evacuation order for the entire east bank of the parish.
Plaquemines President Keith Hinkley said now is the time to make the hard decision to get out.
“I would recommend anyone to get out even under a category 1,” Hinkley said. “Because nowadays, you’ve got this rapid intensification, so you never know how hard and how bad it’s going to be, and here you are very vulnerable.”
Villere Reggio in Myrtle Grove is heeding the warnings.
“If they expect high water, everybody’s leaving,” Reggio said. “You get trapped back here, you’ve got to go.”
Reggio spent part of the afternoon installing storm shutters, packing up, and getting out.
He and his neighbors took on water during the last big storm Hurricane Ida three years ago.
“I got close to 5, 6, almost 7 feet I guess in the garage,” Reggio said. “Lot of damage to the lower part of the house. Doors were blown out. Walls were blown out.”
Throughout the day, fishing boats arrived at the Empire Safe Harbor to ride out the storm.
Empire Marina Owner and Parish Councilman Mitch Jurisich said by mid-day there were about 250 boats in the harbor.
“This is their life,” Jurisich said. “This is their livelihood. They’ve been going through some tough times lately. You’ve got to protect your equipment.”
Plaquemines Parish officials are warning residents you just don’t know what you’ll get with Francine until it makes landfall.
“If this storm continues to shift eastward, we’re going to be, we could possibly see Hwy 23 go underwater,” Jurisich said. “Once that happens, then it will be several days before we can get our residents back in.”
“We’ve got about a four-mile stretch that we talked about earlier on Hwy 39 that it doesn’t even have back levee protection. We’re okay with a storm surge of three to five feet. But if it comes up another foot, you’ll have that possibility of 6 inches to 12 inches of water on the road.
There is a shelter set up where people can go to ride out the storm in the multipurpose room on the campus of the Plaquemines Parish Government complex.
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