Jefferson Parish, LA

August 2009

Fourth & Forward

As the 4th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaches, the President of Jefferson Parish reflects on the recovery progress made in the area.

It's a steady progression. Overall we're about 75 to 80 percent recovered from all of our public facilities that were damaged during Hurricane Katrina and Rita. And I think that's a very good percentage for us to have at this particular time.

The quality of life is a very important goal for us here at Jefferson Parish. We need to have our libraries, our fire stations, our public buildings open to the public, now that we have the population back.

Wagner Library was reopened in October of 2008, and it was completely physically reconfigured to make it more modern, to the libraries of today. We're accepting donations to improve the computer network and the furnishings. So that library is a good success story, it's up and running. It's an example of what we're trying to do with the remainder of our libraries that are not yet open in Jefferson Parish.

We put a very high priority on getting our fire stations back up and running, and also that they are of a higher caliber of construction in regards to their wind tolerance, in regards to protecting the mechanics of operating that station, making it safe from flooding.

Fire station 14 was in the Old Metairie area that was inundated by the waters from the breach in the 17th street canal. So it was severely flooded, and flooded for a great number of days. That caused us to rethink everything about how that station would be rebuilt.

Also we made sure that in the construction, we have put all the living quarters and the operations of the fire station on the second floor.

Also, elevating the mechanical operations. The electrical and mechanical operations of that station. They've been elevated to over 8 feet in the air. That allows them to be protected against flood water of up to 8 feet. And I think these are critical elements that we have learned that we are going to have to infuse into our construction both today and in the future.

Pontiff playground in old Metairie, which is another area flooded by the 17th street canal breach, is probably one of our grandest playgrounds in Jefferson Parish. It was important for us to get that back up and running.

The gymnasium is a major focus and core of that playground and we just broke ground on that last week.

Considering that this is probably the biggest disaster that FEMA has ever had to contend with size, geography and money wise, I think that both the government side and FEMA side learned from this experience every year.

I think if we can look a year from now and say that we're 95 percent home in our recovery I think that'd be a landmark for our parish and one that we're eager to achieve and one that puts us ever so close to being finished with our major recovery of our public facilities.