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Beauregard Parish leaders worked together this week to streamline evacuation procedures and other processes they believe the parish could benefit from in the event of another major storm event.

Nearly 100 local and state leaders gathered on May 24 for the parish’s annual Hurricane Workshop. In attendance were leaders from Beauregard, Vernon and Calcasieu parishes as well as U.S. Congressman Mike Johnson, via Zoom. Special guest Roger Erickson from the National Weather Service in Lake Charles helped to provide an overview of what forecasters believe can be expected from this year’s hurricane season.

Director of Beauregard Parish’s Emergency Preparedness Scott Greenmun said a top focus of the meeting was to review the parish’s evacuation plans, which were put to the test during the aftermath of Hurricane Laura and ahead of Hurricane Delta.

Hurricane Delta was the first time a mandatory evacuation has ever been ordered for Beauregard Parish.

“There were such significant damages left from Hurricane Laura that we were still very much in recovery mode as Hurricane Delta approached. There was a large amount of debris and in fact we still had some people without water and power, so as that storm approached it was deemed necessary to issue the evacuation order,” Greenmun said.

The lessons learned from that experience were useful in critiquing the parish’s response and highlighting areas of improvement should an evacuation be needed again, Greenmun said.

Moving forward, he said parish officials will be able to effectively coordinate with state agencies for speedy evacuations. In the event of another evacuation, the parish will utilize the DeRidder Junior High School gymnasium as a parish-operated pickup location where state buses will then transport residents to an emergency shelter.

What Greenmun said was one of the biggest learning curves during the Hurricane Delta evacuation was assisting senior citizens and those with special medical needs to get to that pickup location. In the event of another evacuation, Greenmun said that there will be designated pickup points to help provide those residents and others in more remote areas of the parish with transportation to the junior high school for state pickup.

Greenmun said the evacuations are a high-priority as Beauregard Parish remains unable to provide such long-term shelters locally.

“We are not a sheltering parish. We do not have the resources or manpower to provide those services, and what we experienced from Hurricanes Laura and Delta proves that we cannot establish a shelter here unless it is for an immediate, life-threatening emergency situation,” Greenmun said.

The parish’s experience from Hurricane Laura also led leaders to see another focus for improvement. Greenmun said plans are now in place to offer “cooling stations” if the area should lose power and water for another significant amount of time, as it did in the weeks following Hurricane Laura.

“We had three heat-related deaths during that time within our elderly community, and we want to do everything possible to prevent that from happening again,” Greenmun said.

The parish is now working through Hazard Mitigation Programs to arrange a plan for generators to be brought in and set up at participating churches to allow for cooling stations to begin operating in such a situation. While Hurricane Laura was as financially devastating as it was physically damaging for the parish, Greenmun said that open lines of communication between local and state leaders has helped the parish in its response and future planning.

“We are all doing the best that we can do with what we have right now, and I do believe that we will come out of it for the better in the event of another major storm. The communication that we have here in Beauregard Parish amongst our Unified Command Group is amazing.

“Everyone works together well and with one goal in mind, and that is to help this community. That alone makes all the difference when you are faced with an emergency and when you are planning for another one. We hope that we will not need to put these plans into action, but we are better by having them ready to roll out,” he said.