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Minimal damage reported from Isaac
Concordia's crops may have suffered the most from rains and wind spawned by Hurricane Isaac last week, but overall damage was much less than feared.
Rainfall was widely mixed -- from 5.1 inches in the Vidalia area to 3.2 inches at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Lock & Dam on the Black River south of Jonesville.
"I've heard rainfall amounts ranging from as much as eight inches to a quarter of an inch," according to Seab Brown of the LSU AgCenter. "We did better than most expected as far as crop damage."
Concordia Parish Police Jury President Melvin Ferrington said most of the downed limbs and debris were cleared from roadways by late last week.
"I think we faired real well," he said.
He said the Jury is working with Waste Connections of Louisiana on getting limbs picked up at residences parishwide.
Students returned to school on Friday after being out due to the storm on Wednesday and Thursday.
Concordia Parish School Supt. Dr. Paul Nelson said the Ferriday Junior High gym suffered roof damage due to high wind.
"The wind pulled a little section of the roof off," Nelson said. "We're looking at about $7,000 to fix it. Otherwise, we had a couple of minor leaks here and there."
He said a decision will be made later on when the lost days due to the storm will be made up.
"I think we're pretty lucky," he said. "We dodged a bullet."
Seab Brown with the AgCenter said about a third to a half of the remaining corn crop was blown over by wind.
"The wind did a lot of damage to the rice crop and blew a lot of boles out of defoliated cotton," he said.
The rainfall, more so than wind, damaged some of the soybean crop to an extent, he said.
"The seeds will start to sprout or rot on bean crops that have been defoliated," he said. "The soybeans will also shatter."
He said there may be cases in which extremely late planted soybeans and grain sorghum benefited from the rain.
"The storm certainly was not catastrophic and overall we faired fairly well," he said. "It was nothing like Gustav (2008) or other storms."
J.W. Calhoun at Calhoun Bend said he received 3.1 inches of rainfall from Wednesday through the weekend.
"I'm about a mile from the Jonesville Lock & Dam," he said. "In my farming career, June and September have become the two months that I dread.
"In June the change of season with summer can hit you with a hot dry June which is devastating. September can be hot, humid and stormy or just hot and dry."
He estimated that most of the corn and milo crop south of Vidalia has been harvested.
"The one odd thing was that after the storm I counted 15 hummingbirds in my yard and at church on Sunday everybody said they saw a lot of hummingbirds, too," he said. "So I'm assuming the storm blew them in."
Meanwhile, Concordia Electric Executive Assistant Lori Jackson said the system "was back to normal pretty quickly. This was nothing like Gustav. The outages weren't that bad but were widespread for a couple of days."
She said most of the outages were caused by tree limbs falling on power lines. The lost of a transformer at Rhinehart caused one of the biggest outages during the storm, she said.
"By the time we left Friday afternoon we were pretty much back to normal," she said. "Our crews had worked through the night for a couple of days and they were pretty tired."For the full story, subscribe to the The Concordia Sentinel's NEW E-Edition! |
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