Vidrine recalls Katrina challenges

Barely six months after taking over as director of the St. Landry Parish Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, Lisa Vidrine faced one of the biggest challenges of her career as Hurricane Katrina came ashore south of New Orleans.
“It was such a huge undertaking, something we had never done before,” Vidrine said. “It was such a physically and emotionally draining effort, to try to accommodate and make sure the evacuees’ needs were being met. We (St. Landry Parish) and even the rest of the state were not equipped for long term sheltering.”
“Everyone pulled together for the Hurricane Katrina effort. It was a huge learning experience for the parish and eye-opening for everyone. We learned a lot.”
Sheltering the evacuees became the parish’s main objective, and five parish facilities opened and about 40 shelters were in operation once Hurricane Katrina made landfall and the levees broke.
“Churches and faith-based organizations stepped up and took people in,” Vidrine said. “We also had individuals who offered evacuees to stay in their homes, too.”
As news of the devastation in New Orleans spread through the media, donations for the evacuees poured in, and St. Landry Parish opened a disaster relief office at old Walmart facility in Opelousas.
“We received donations from around the country — clothes, baby items, toiletries, even cosmetics,” Vidrine said. “It’s a good feeling to know that people could do that. Some sent what little they could. It’s good to be able to help in that little way.
“We wanted to make sure the evacuees needs were being met.”
With the parish already in response mode, preparing for the arrival of Hurricane Rita and more evacuees about a month later was a bit easier.
“The parish is close enough to the Gulf that we still have to worry about hurricane force winds,” Vidrine said. “We closed some of shelters here that weren’t hurricane-force, and we moved some evacuees to a temporary location in Ouachita Parish.
After Hurricane Rita ripped it’s way up the Sabine River, the dividing line between Louisiana and Texas, the parish now had evacuees from both hurricanes staying in area.
“We did not have as many Hurricane Rita evacuees as we did for Hurricane Katrina,” Vidrine said. “Many of the Hurricane Rita evacuees were from Texas.”
By the close of 2005, only a few Hurricane Katrina remained in the parish at a shelter in Melville.
“They didn’t want to leave,” Vidrine said. “They came from St. Bernard Parish and that was all they knew. The change for them, it was hard.”