Hurricane Ike causes shift in New Iberia schedules

Update from 9:30 Saturday morning, post-Ike.

Winds blustery in area. Hard rains last night, but came in waves from bands of storm so not consistent. Doesn’t appear as if we had much local street flooding. Few limbs, not much debris down along roads on my way into office. Imagine Gustav last week shook down most of the weak stuff, so most of area had been pruned. Never lost power at my house though we had some strong winds associated with various bands from storm. Numerous tornado warnings issued for parish. Heard reports on one in Jeanerette, but don’t know details. Overall, it appears New Iberia area spared any real damage.

Newspaper building tight, never lost power I think. Got a good group in this morning working on wrapping up issues for Sunday, starting on news and such.

Community of Delcambre flooded from storm surge before sun went down last night. No word on just how high it got overnight, but that’s going to be bad. That community was just recovering from Rita three years ago. No word yet from Avery Island and other low areas. Port of Iberia was seeing some rising water but knew this time to get equipment and other important items off the ground to avoid high water. Will have to see what final result was.

Overall early impression is that this was less of a problem that Rita three years ago. Hope our employees and carriers in low areas are OK.  

Will say it appears we got lucky that we got Gustav and not Ike.

Will Chapman