After touring Winn Parish to observe storm damage, Louisiana State Senator Jay Luneau (Luneau) addressed the Winn Parish Police Jury (Jury) yesterday with updates on the Hurricane Laura Recovery effort statewide. “I want to tell you what it means to come to an area and see everyone pulling together and helping each other because that helps more than anything we can do on a state or local government level. When local neighbors come together and help each other, that’s what counts, and that’s what we saw everywhere we went today,” said Luneau. Luneau also informed the Jury that Hurricane Laura was the largest most destructive hurricane ever recorded in Louisiana’s history. More so than Rita or Katrina. For the first time in history, Ruston, LA, had a hurricane come through. Although Ruston has had tropical storms and tropical depressions, the town has never had a storm that was still classified as a hurricane come through. “The state has more utility workers working on restoring power than it’s ever had. Louisiana was fortunate that there was no storm damage anywhere else in the country at the same time so that so many utility workers could be sent to Louisiana,” stated Luneau.
Luneau stated that he and the governor are surprised that the president has not added more than five parishes to the disaster recovery designation. “I’m not sure why the president is choosing to handle the designation this way, but I encourage all of you to contact your senators and congressman and encourage them to encourage the president to go ahead and sign the declaration to get parishes like Winn, Grant, and Rapides added to get people the help that is desperately needed in this first week and not a week or two after this disaster.”
U.S. Senators:
John Kennedy
Alexandria Office
6501 Coliseum Blvd
Suite 700A
Alexandria, LA 71303
Phone: 318-445-2892
Email: https://www.kennedy.senate.gov/public/email-me
Bill Cassidy
3600 Jackson Street, Ste. 115A
Alexandria, LA 71303
Phone: (318) 448-7176
Fax: (318) 448-5175
Email: https://www.cassidy.senate.gov/contact/
U.S. Representative 5th Congressional District
Ralph Abraham
417 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Phone: (202) 225-8490
Fax: (202) 225-5639
Email: https://abraham.house.gov/zip-code-lookup?form=/contact/email
Winnfield Mayor George Moss updated the Jury on recovery response in the city. The City of Winnfield is picking up debris inside the city limits. The city dump is not currently open; however, they will accept debris (limbs only) at the dirt pit on Neil Wagoner.
Mayor Moss also encourages citizens not to move limbs with wires in them. There have been two electrocutions. The city sewer is still down, but they are still working on it. The city’s top priorities are restoring power to the hospital, nursing home, and sewer station.
Winn Parish Police Juror Kirk Miles encourages people to be cautious when driving down parish roads. “Just because a road has been cleared does not mean that another tree has not fallen since you last traveled the road. Please continue to drive slowly,” stated Miles.
Winn Parish Police Jury President Josh McAllister asked the jurors to identify two representatives from their area willing to transport supplies from the command center back to their districts.
Louisiana Air National Guard 259 ATCS (Air Traffic Control Squad) out of Alexandria, LA continue to provide commodities daily at Winnfield Senior High School. Commodities include MRE’s, water and ice.
Entergy is reporting 4,383 customers without power today in Winn Parish. In north Louisiana, several substations have been returned to service, allowing crews to energize distribution lines, and restore power to customers.
Current distribution system damage assessment in Louisiana includes damage to 8,192 poles, 3,359 transformers and 443 miles of wire. Crews have been successful in completing repairs to our distribution system and services to individual households, however they continue to face significant obstacles to rebuild our transmission system which was heavily impacted by Laura.
