MONROE, La. – The official start of the 2021 Atlantic Hurricane Season is less than 30 days away and here in Louisiana, we’re just getting done with cleaning up after last year. Okay, we are nowhere close to being finished with the clean-up and recovery that three big-time storms left behind during last year’s tumultuous and record-breaking storm season.
However, we can tell you that the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development has completed its mission of moving tons and tons of storm debris from affected areas. Officials with La DoTD estimate that their crews removed more than three million cubic yards of storm debris.
Of course, the parishes that had the most mess to clean up are still cleaning up. Those parishes include Calcasieu and Cameron who took the brunt of Hurricanes Laura and Delta back to back last year. Storm clean-up was also significant in Allen, Beauregard, and Jeff Davis parishes too. It is estimated that those five parishes were responsible for about two million cubic yards of the three million cubic yards of debris.
Debris removal in the affected areas of the state actually began right after Hurricane Laura made landfall in August. Of course, those services were interrupted just a few weeks later when Hurricane Delta made landfall in just about the exact same part of the state. Of course, weeks after that, Hurricane Zeta affected the southeastern part of the state.
LaDoTD officials say that it was important to get as much debris picked up and out of people’s way so they could continue the recovery process. Let us hope that this year’s hurricane season will be a little quieter for Louisiana. Although, the common thinking among tropical forecasters is that the 2021 Hurricane Season will be just as active as the 2020 Season was.
By the way, the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness encourages you to Get A Game Plan before the new hurricane season starts. You can find some great information on how to prepare for the big storms at that website, or you could just take a look and see how us regular folks get ready for storm season.
