Louisiana Emergency Preparedness Conference

Louisiana Emergency Preparedness Association (LEPA) and Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Conference.

LEPA will bring together emergency preparedness and response practitioners.

We will be at the conference and available to discuss flood defence preparation. Find us at booth 209.

 

 

February 2016 - We get the call to provide emergency Technical Support to the US Army Corps of Engineers in Louisiana.

The flight is booked that evening and in the air the next morning…
There were sites at various locations along the Mississippi facing a serious flood event and the main effort was the protection of Morgan City and a large Oil Refinery at Krotz Springs.

The Mississippi was rising fast and the USACE had a strategic Water Management Plan in place to divert and manage the water coming South which included closing off Bayou Chene Floodgate…however they also had to prepare for the potential looming threat of opening the Morganza Spillway- this spillway stands between the Mississippi and the Morganza Floodway, it has been engineered to divert water from the Mississippi River during major flood events by flooding the Atchafalaya Basin, the Atchafalaya River and the Atchafalaya Swamp - this is a last resort, they would only open this spillway if the threat was equivalent to 17 Olympic size swimming pools, flowing past the spillway every second!

There were a team of approx. 100 National Guard servicemen and women drafted in as an emergency deployment to support the USACE in installing over 3 ½ miles of HESCO flood barrier at both sites.

As soon as the initial brief of “do’s and don’ts” of installing our units was completed, it was full speed ahead and the National Guard worked 24/7 in order to complete the task.

The threat from the rising water levels and expected cresting date was monitored constantly and the risk to Morgan City was reduced due to the installation of the Hesco Barriers on Avoca Island.