By KEVIN CHIRI

Editor and Publisher

LAPLACE – On Sunday, St. John Parish President Bill Hubbard figured it was time to do what the man upstairs says we should all do on Sunday—rest.

So he went to mass, looking for a rest, and a way to recharge himself after his non-stop, whirlwind schedule that has been going on since Hurricane Gustav visited the River Region just over a week ago.

“I really did try to listen and focus on the mass, but honestly, it was kind of hard,” Hubbard said this week. “Everyone is so tired of all this, and I’m a little tired too.”

For Hubbard, in his first year as the parish president in St. John who is now handling the effects of a hurricane, the questions, requests, responsibilities and downright demands have been unending. Even some of his best friends have pushed hard to cash in a chip to get a favor, if there even was such a thing.

“I have so many people coming to me wanting to know why they don’t have power on, and how come somebody else got it before them,” Hubbard said on Monday. “They think I have all this pull to decide who gets power first.

“You know what my list looks like to make sure people get power, and in what order?” he asked.

“It’s like this,” he said, holding up a blank pad of paper.

And so goes the pressure that Hubbard has taken on in his new job, barely a little more than six months old. It’s not something he didn’t expect, nor something he didn’t want, but without question the unexpected hit of a hurricane with 100 mile per hour winds has tested the abilities Hubbard claimed to have as a former construction company owner.

“This has been fast paced, that’s for sure,” he said one day last week, as he jumped into his car to make another round in local neighborhoods. “But honestly? I’m in my element with a lot of stuff going on, and I feel like we are handling things very well.”

Since the storm hit, Hubbard can be found out of the office much more than in the office. He has elected to make constant rounds throughout the parish, continually checking things personally to make sure everything is being taken care of.

When he stops on local streets, talking with people cleaning up their yards, he usually does so knowing he will add something to his “to do list.”

“People want to see you, and they want to know that you care about their own little problems,” he said after talking to a group in Riverlands Heights.

But that’s also where the feedback makes it clear that Hubbard is getting things done, and having a positive affect.

“He brought all these pumps into our neighborhood before the storm hit, and it was the first time that had been done,” said Albert Shows, who has been living here for 42 years. “This area doesn’t drain well, but those pumps probably kept us from flooding.”

As Hubbard headed for his next area to check, he noticed a power line pulled down by a huge tree. Stopping on the road, he called it in to be sure that there was not a hazard to the neighborhood.

“What gets me is when I stop and people go crazy telling me things like ‘I need ice!’ I try to tell those folks that we think the electricity is the most important thing to get to people,” he said.

Then there are the calls he was getting last week from people who elected to evacuate, but are out of money.

“They are calling us and wanting us to get them money so they can stay in a hotel,” Hubbard related. “But it’s not our job to pay for that.”

As he heads for Highway 51, the phone rings again. It’s obviously a good friend, who wants to know when it will be time to return home.

“Figure a week without power,” Hubbard said. “I’m just being honest.”

And as he is on the line with that call, one of his other phones rings. Surprisingly, he somehow manages to handle both calls at once.

“One of our biggest problems has been keeping the water and sewer all working, since we don’t have electricity to all the substations. We’re doing  it with generators,” he said. “Then in the middle of that, we find out we are running out of chemicals to treat the water, and our vendor is closed down.”

Hubbard quickly fixes that by getting a call to the vendor and getting the shop opened just so St. John can get the supplies they need.

Not only was there a challenge just keeping the water and sewer lines flowing—in the right direction—but Hubbard said that the saturated ground was actually making some water lines have new breaks in them.

“The ground is so soft that the lines begin to move a lot, and get cracks in them,” he said. “You get the same problem when there are drought conditions.”

As he stops by a drainage canal near Interstate 10, checking the level of the water, he points out how high it is.

“This is why we needed the hurricane levee bond money,” he said. “This won’t happen anymore from hurricanes or other storms if we get the levee built. But we needed that bond issue passed.

“I’ll be bringing that back to the people one more time, and if they defeat it again, they’ll never hear about hurricane levees again from me. But I’m telling you that this is a serious concern for all of LaPlace, since the right hurricane coming out of the Gulf could flood the whole area,” he explained.

As he began work on Monday, marking a week since Gustav made his appearance here, Hubbard said that he has learned one valuable lesson through his first hurricane experience.

“I’ve really learned that we have to become completely self-sufficient. We had more state or federal promises for things, but they never came through, or they came through far later than promised. I’d get a call saying ‘Hey Bill, we’ll have three generators there at 8 a.m. in the morning.’ So I would tell people that, and then we would have no generators,” he explained. “That kind of thing with the state or feds happened a lot and it has made me know that I can’t be sure what they will do, or when they will do it.”

As the phones continued ringing Monday, Hubbard geared up for the busy schedule to continue, especially with the potential threat of another hurricane named Ike that might visit here by the weekend.

But through it all, he tried to keep some bit of perspective on what was important.

“I took Sherry (his wife) out a couple of times this weekend to eat, just so we could have some time to relax and be together,” he said. “And when we went to Bull’s Corner on Sunday, I saw some old friends and a number of them said we were doing a good job. That was nice.”

But by and large, he knows the majority of calls he gets won’t be to say “thanks.” Instead, they are the endless requests, questions and yes, demands, for the parish president to do something for them.

For that, Hubbard keeps tackling one challenge after another, knowing that the demands of the job have required that of him. And it’s something the new parish president seems well equipped to handle.