Hurricane Gustav was absolutely a significant part of the history of this parish when it comes down to storms. It was not the magnitude of a Katrina, other than Katrina, it stands out as being one of the worst storms this parish has gone thru in decades.

If you start talking about the lower end of the parish, the South Ponchatoula/Manchac area, most structures in those areas had some damage, again you had very few that were totally lost.

We allowed our water patrol division which is headed up by Ronnie Harper, he's been with the Sheriff's office for a number of years. We allowed him to take several representatives of FEMA and just show them, not just a bird's eye view, obviously, but a view from the boats, and actually went on the property physically and inspected them.

I think it was helpful, I think it alleviates a lot of the fears and concerns our citizens have. Once they realize that FEMA is here, I think everybody just breathes a little sigh of relief and says okay we know that help is here and it won't be long if we need any emergency resources we'll be able to have them.

I think the lesson learned is probably something we already knew and that is preparation works.

We never really lost any communications during Gustav, even though 90% of the parish was without electricity for quite some time. We were always able to communicate with our fire departments, with OEP, with Acadian ambulance, with FEMA. We were able to do that because preparation worked.