BR pounded

State Public Service Commission Secretary Lawrence St. Blanc said this morning that power should return to about half of Baton Rouge within the next one to eight days.  

But the other 50 percent of Baton Rouge could be without electricity for three to four weeks, he said.

The state PSC regulates utility companies in Louisiana.

Hurricane Gustav’s blow to Louisiana’s power supply is the largest Entergy Corp. has seen since in the state since Hurricane Katrina, an electric company official said.

“We have a huge undertaking ahead of us,” said Jeff Holeman, an Entergy spokesman, adding that 786,000 of their customers in Louisiana are without power.

The electric company’s transmission system received “massive damage,” and more than 200 substations are out of service, he said.

Four hospitals in East Baton Rouge Parish are running on generator power, city-parish officials said. Lane Memorial Medical Center has no power.

Hospitals and sewer stations will get power before anyone else, said Walter Monsour, East Baton Rouge Parish Mayor-President Kip Holden’s chief administrative officer.

About 12,000 utility workers from across the country are on their way to Louisiana, Holeman said.

9:28 a.m. -- Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008

Restoration of the Capital City has begun but the job is going to take a while, officials said at a morning briefing at the East Baton Rouge Parish Emergency Operations Center on Harding Boulevard.

Unlike after hurricanes Katrina and Rita when Baton Rouge was able to help other Louisiana cities in need, “this time around it’s about us,” said Walter Monsour, Mayor-President Kip Holden’s chief administrative officer. “We need first priority on some things and we are going to make sure we get it.”

The city-parish is working with FEMA to try to get food, water and tarps to people throughout the parish.

Employees with the federal agency told local officials Monday they had the supplies in Alexandria and would try to be in Baton Rouge today, Monsour said.

But today, FEMA said they made a mistake and that the supplies are in Texas, not Alexandria.

“We are ready,” said Mike Futrell, Holden’s assistant chief administrative officer. “We are just waiting for the supplies.”

John Bajon, a FEMA spokesman at the emergency operations center, said he could not comment on the issue but would get someone who could.

Pete Newkirk, director of public works, said about 75 percent of streets in East Baton Rouge Parish are cleared, with the exception of those involving downed power lines.

Traffic signals, however, are still down, he said. The majority, 455, are down because of lack of power. The remaining 10 are down because of structural damage.

Monsour said it would be around noon before city-parish officials had a better idea of when power would be restored.

In the meantime, Baton Rouge Fire Chief Ed Smith urged residents to be cautious with things such as candles and propane.

“The biggest thing we need from the community is for them to be careful,” he said. “If you need us, call us.”

Baton Rouge Police Chief Jeff LeDuff asked residents to remain off the city’s streets if possible. If travel is necessary, he said, people should treat intersections with downed traffic signals as four-way stops.

LeDuff also asked resident to be wary of people who come to their residences telling them they are with the city-parish to cut down their trees and need a deposit.

“This is a season for scams,” he said.

Overnight, police officers arrested 18 people, said Sgt. Don Kelly, a police spokesman. Three people were booked on counts of looting, eight were booked on counts of burglary, two on counts of prostitution and five on counts of breaking the city-parish curfew.

Col. Rickey Adams with the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office said deputies arrested at least one person and booked them on a count of looting.

A total of 30 people showed up at the two Red Cross shelters set up Monday night in the parish, Monsour said. The shelters can house 700.

2 a.m. -- Monday, Sept. 1, 2008

Hurricane Gustav swept through Baton Rouge on Monday, killing at least two people, blowing down trees and power lines and carving a path of destruction some officials say is worse than the devastation Hurricane Betsy left in 1965.

“This is the most destruction in East Baton Rouge Parish in anyone’s memory,” said Walter Monsour, Mayor-President Kip Holden’s chief administrative officer.

Gustav was a Category 2 hurricane when it landed at Cocodrie in Terrebonne Parish at 9:30 a.m., the National Weather Service said.

Sustained winds of up to 61 mph and gusts up to 91 mph ripped through the Capital City, almost surpassing what residents saw during Betsy when gusts reached 92 mph, Monsour said.

Gustav tore down trees, power lines and traffic signals throughout the parish, leaving 300,000 residents without power and causing enough damage to initiate a 10-hour curfew and the Red Cross to open at least two shelters.

FEMA, along with the Louisiana National Guard, plans to open five areas within the parish where food, water and tarps will be distributed.

Locations will be announced today.

At 2 p.m., when the harshest part of the storm hit, most first responders and law enforcement officers were pulled off the streets unless they were responding to life-and-death situations, city-parish officials said.

Those workers, along with workers from the Department of Public Works and electric companies, will hit the streets in full force at dawn to repair the city and ensure people’s safety, officials said.

“There are several trees down all over everywhere,” one female voice said over the police  scanner  at  3:45 p.m.

Flights at Baton Rouge Metro Airport are scheduled to resume at 11 a.m. today.

Fatalities
Richard Broussard, 72, and his wife, Mary Ann Darby Broussard, 71, were killed at about 1:20 p.m. Monday when a tree fell on the house at 1218 Elm Crest Drive they were staying in during the storm, said Sgt. Don Kelly, a Baton Rouge police  spokesman.

The Abbeville couple came to Baton Rouge to stay with their daughter and her boyfriend, Kelly said. The daughter and boyfriend also were inside the house and suffered moderate injuries when the tree fell, he said. They were rescued and transported to Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center.

Caroline Marchand, 10, was sitting on her bed around 1:20 p.m. when a gust of wind blew the tree into the two-story red brick house across the street. “All of a sudden I turned around and the tree was falling over,” she said. “It really happened fast.”

Susan Marchand, Caroline’s mother, called 911, and the East Baton Rouge Urban Search and Rescue team and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries responded, and began searching for the wounded.

A third Baton Rouge-area storm victim, a St. Francisville man, was killed Sunday.

Red Cross shelters
The Red Cross opened two shelters in East Baton Rouge Parish Monday night. The shelters, which can house a total of 700 people, are located at a BREC facility at 4600 Gus Young Ave., and at Bethany World Prayer Center in Baker, 13855 Plank Road, officials said.

Another shelter to house 400 people, might open today.

Before the shelters opened in East Baton Rouge Parish, more than 45,000 people were being housed Monday at 330 Red Cross shelters in Louisiana and seven other states, said Kendall Hebert, a spokeswoman with the Capital Area Red Cross.
Ten of those shelters opened in Ascension, Iberville, Livingston and West Baton Rouge parishes late Sunday, she said.

For more information about shelters in Louisiana and Baton Rouge, call 1 (800) 755-5175.

Curfew
Holden established a parish-wide curfew from 8 p.m. Monday to 6 a.m. today to keep people off the streets.

The curfew does not apply to people who need to get to work between those hours or to people who are on the roads because of an emergency, Holden said.

But the curfew should be taken seriously.

“We have a tremendous amount of trees, power lines and debris on the roads,” Holden said at a briefing Monday. “If we don’t control the situation now, people could get hurt or killed.”

Baton Rouge Police Chief Jeff LeDuff said he needs people in the community to help his officers help them.

“We need people to stay off the streets if they can,” he said, emphasizing those who are strolling parish streets to see Hurricane Gustav’s damage. “We do no one any good if we are hurt.”

East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid Gautreaux agreed. If people are on the streets during the curfew hours without a good reason, Gautreaux said, “We have a place for you to stay.”

Sheriff’s Cpl. Chad Parker said late Monday the procedure for the curfew is that the first time deputies talk to someone, it’s a warning. The second time, the deputies could give the person a ticket and the third time the deputies could arrest the person, he said. Deputies also planned to do traffic stops on any vehicles they see driving around during curfew.

Almost 200 deputies, more than 200 police officers and Louisiana National Guard troops were slated to patrol the streets during the curfew, law enforcement officials said.

P-MAC/LSU
The special-needs shelters at LSU’s Pete Maravich Assembly Center and the Field House were full Monday, housing 450 patients and caregivers, said Robin Kistler, a university spokeswoman.

Both shelters lost power, along with the rest of LSU’s campus, said Kristine Calongne, an LSU spokeswoman.

Power was restored to the Field House by Monday afternoon. Power was expected to be restored to between 60 percent and 80 percent of the campus by the end of the day.

Downed trees, no power
Theresa Poulos, 23, stood on her Oleander Street porch Monday evening and marveled that her Saturn SUV, though surrounded by the branches of a downed tree, had not been crushed.

Poulos, originally from Chicago, and three other Teach for America members from around the country, rode out their first hurricane in the Garden District home.

“It came with a bang,” Robin Peterson, 23, said of Gustav.

Peterson, who teaches in Amite, said she watched as each successive gust uprooted the tree, until it finally toppled.

Kaitlin Foe, 24, from Davis, Calif., said that while she is accustomed to earthquakes in her home state, a hurricane was more difficult to endure.

An earthquake “is like this 10-minute thing, not an all-day throttle,” Foe said. “We just got really lucky.”

With trees down all over the neighborhood in the Hundred Oaks subdivision, residents by 6 p.m. Monday started cleaning up  the smaller fallen limbs.

Billy Lowrey said he was surprised at the amount of wind damage in the neighborhood. “It (the storm) turned out to be the biggest one at least I’ve lived through and I’ve been here 25 years,” he  said.

Down the street, Craig Broome looked at the fallen tree in his front yard and said he was lucky he didn’t get any damage, although his neighbor had some damage to the front corner of the house.

The wind damage didn’t surprise him, he said.

“We are living in an area full of trees,” Broome said. “From what I see, we’re pretty lucky.”

Gustav also knocked out power to Baton Rouge Metro Airport on Monday, airport officials said, but all flights had been canceled 14 hours earlier in anticipation of its  arrival.

“Nothing is flying today,” Ronnie L. Pickard, manager of airport marketing and air service, said at 2:12 p.m.

The main terminal had not been damaged, Pickard said. No injuries were reported and absent any overnight damage to the runways, he said, flights are expected to resume this morning.

Baker
In Baker, a police officer escaped injury when he was out of his patrol unit as a large tree fell and smashed the back portion of its cab and trunk, Baker Police Chief Mike Knaps said.

The officer was checking out another tree that fell on a home on Greenwood Lane about 3 p.m. when the tree crushed the car, Knaps said. The officer was near the house looking for trapped residents when the tree fell on his car, he said.

Knaps said officers patrolling after 5:30 p.m. reported damage similar to other parts of the state: downed trees and power lines, damaged roofs and debris littering roadways.

“If you name it, we’ve got it,” he said. “It looks like somebody dropped a bomb in Baker.”

However, Mayor Harold Rideau said there were no reports of injuries.

Also, The Miracle Place Church was assisting 160 evacuees, many from New Orleans and others who fled their Baker mobile homes, by 11 a.m. Monday.

Some evacuees had initially sought shelter at another Baker church, The Rock, which is being used to shelter the elderly and nursing home residents.

Rahsha Holmes, a church spokeswoman, said church staff and volunteers started working together Saturday and Sunday to serve any evacuees who needed  them  by making bunk beds,  among  other efforts.

Zachary
In Zachary, a tornado briefly touched down in Cypress Park subdivision off Old Baker Road, damaging homes and uprooting trees before it lifted off the ground again and roared over Mayor Henry Martinez’s home at about 2:45 p.m.

There were no reports of injuries from the tornado or from the storm in general, Martinez said. He reported extensive storm damage and a blacked-out power grid.

“It’s like a war zone,” Martinez said. “It appears that almost the whole city is down.”

The city has put its police officers and firefighters on double shifts, Martinez said, and, like other cities, will start to assess damage citywide today.