Parish leaders in southeast Louisiana are confident in their preparations ahead of Hurricane Zeta.
Forecasters expect the storm to make landfall late Wednesday as a Category 1 hurricane.
It has been a very active hurricane season. Hurricane Zeta will become the fifth named storm to blow across Louisiana this year.
Preparing for so many storms could make some Louisiana residents storm-weary, but St. Bernard Parish President, Guy McInnis says, people in his parish are still taking the threat seriously.
“We feel good about our preparations, we feel good about our citizens being vigilant and not having this fatigue people talk about. The spirit is there to prepare, for our family and their safety,” said McInnis.
Over in Lafourche, Parish President Archie Chaisson says his parish is already prepared for Hurricane Zeta because storm and flood preparations from the previous hurricanes are still in place throughout the parish.
“A lot of the preparations we have done, we have left in place because we seem to be dealing with these things every three to four weeks. So, luckily for us, there isn’t a lot of things we need to pull triggers on,” said Chaisson.
In Jefferson Parish, emergency managers say forecasters expect Zeta to be more of a ‘wind event’ for the parish.
Director of Emergency Management for Jefferson Parish, Joe Valiente says the parish is prepared for Zeta including Grand Isle, which he says the island, like the rest of the parish, is in good shape.
“And that is primarily due to all the hurricanes or storms that we have had that have just brushed by us,” Valiente said. “We’ve had this accumulation of preparation that have been going on since Cristobal in June.”
He says Grand Isle’s burrito levee is now shored up with rocks, and the backside of the island now has a five-foot berm, which he says kept most of Delta’s storm surge out.
