Recovery effort well under way across parish

By GLORIA LUPO

The Daily News

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"The thing about the situation after Hurricane Katrina is that it was much, much more than we could have imagined," said Washington Parish President M. E. "Toye" Taylor. "But with the help of our citizens and volunteers, we are getting out of this. I thank the thousands who have helped for the wonderful work they have done."

"Because we lived through Camille in 1969, we thought we knew what to expect," Taylor continued. "But this is 36 years later. Technology has changed everything, and quick communication is something we take for granted. I never thought communications would come before food, water and oxygen and other medical supplies, but without the right communications lines open, it has become almost impossible to meet other basic needs."

Starting with communicating the needs of the parish to the outside world and persons and agencies that could bring help, the parish government has focused also on the need for fuel, medicine and health care, food, water and supplemental law enforcement. With a huge area affected by the hurricane and the tremendously severe conditions in areas to the south, Washington Parish survived on its own for a full week with parish and municipal governments, citizens and businesses pulling together.

On August 29 when Katrina roared through, Taylor and all other emergency officials were stationed at the Parish Office of Emergency Preparedness Complex, located just west of Bogalusa. The storm shut down communications at the complex, but somehow phone lines remained open throughout it all to the Bogalusa mayor's office.

National Guardsmen at the mayor's office volunteered to take a plea for help to Baton Rouge and got it there by midnight. With no answer from the state the next day, Taylor sent another envoy to the capitol.

On the third night, Taylor himself with other officials went to Baton Rouge and made a plea for help over radio station WWL and also talked with officials at the State Office of Emergency Preparedness. Taylor continued making addresses over WWL every night for the next six nights then returning each night to the parish. He said he had a tremendous amount of help from State Sen. Ben Nevers.

After Taylor's first WWL address, help started pouring in, he said. Many truckloads of supplies from FEMA, which could not reach the New Orleans area because of flooding, were diverted to north shore parishes. With the help of the Livingston Parish sheriff and parish president, many of those were directed to Washington Parish, Taylor said.

For 10 days, emergency efforts had to overcome the fact that phone calls could not be made across the parish. Taylor said he spent most of that tenth day in St. Tammany Parish, trying to find a BellSouth executive who could tell him what was happening with the phone lines and what the parish could expect. He said managed to speak with some executives.

The phone company previously had told parish government that the situation would remain the same until fiber optic rings could be repaired in the parish. But somehow phones started functioning in mid-afternoon on Wednesday, Sept. 7.

"That changed the whole situation," Taylor said. "Now I can solve many problems in minutes, problems that would have taken days or weeks to solve without quick communication."