New Iberia update - Hurricane Ike
The Daily Iberian is closing its business offices at noon Friday, so that our employees can go home to ride out Hurricane Ike. We are fortunate not to be in the direct path of this storm, but it is passing close enough that we are projected to feel the effects of tropical storm force winds. Low coastal areas may suffer from the high storm surge associated with the storm.
This storm is eerily similar in its path to Hurricane Rita, which saw a storm surge that flooded some homes in coastal areas up to their first floor ceilings, though they’d stood through other storms for 50 years before and never even saw water on their property. It’s got lots of people understandably nervous.
Most areas in the city of New Iberia should be safe from such flooding, but those who live south of U.S. Hwy 90 and in rural areas to the west are threatened.
We printed Friday’s paper Thursday night. In addition, we had a large crew that worked into Thursday night, doing the Sunday and Monday work normally done on Friday. Our production, press and mailroom crew worked late Thursday night, and then came in early Friday to get out a commercial job and some other in-house jobs, just in case we lose power. Others were in the office this morning taking care of last minute details and here to serve a surprising number of customers who called in or came in. Ad comp plans to come in Saturday morning to clean up any last details for ads for Sunday. I want to compliment our carriers who all showed up on short notice Thursday night to pickup their papers and get their routes delivered early Friday a.m.
Our news department plans to post updates on our Web site during the storm and of course we plan to have detailed storm coverage in Sunday’s paper.
Right now we’re hoping to have power Saturday, and open the office on Saturday morning as usual, then get back on our regular printing schedule Saturday night for Sunday and after.
Will Chapman
Publisher/Group Manager
The Daily Iberian/Wick Communications Co.
PH: (337) 365-6773 ext. 3010
FX: (337) 364-1900