By ROBIN SHANNON

Staff Reporter

LAPLACE – With nearly all of the parish back on the electrical grid, St. John Parish is well on the way to returning to some semblance of normalcy following the aftermath of Hurricane Gustav.

Schools are back in session, government offices are fully operational, and most retail establishments in the area are restocked and ready for business, said St. John Public Information Officer Buddy Boe.

“Our parish work crews are no longer handling hurricane assignments and have returned to regular parish work orders,” Boe said. “We have even begun our preparations for the Andouille Festival next month.”

Now that power has been completely restored the parish sewage system, which was plagued by outages, is back to full operation and no longer strained.

“The pumper trucks that were called in to handle our wastewater issues helped us out tremendously,” said Boe. “Now with the power back online, residents should have no sewage issues out of the ordinary.”

To handle the excessive amounts of household garbage, Boe said the parish has asked waste contractor SWeeDee to boost the amount of trucks for garbage pickup from four to 12 to handle all of the residents needs. He said residents should experience two additional garbage pick-ups this weekend, and garbage pickup should be back to normal by Monday.

Boe also said hurricane debris pickup has begun throughout the parish and residents should begin to see the piles disappear from their yards.

“There are 17 crews working in all parts of the parish to get debris to burn units so that it can be disposed of,” said Boe. “It has been a huge undertaking. We had a considerable amount of debris this time.”

Other than the massive amounts of power outages that, Boe said, “were a tremendous burden on the entire parish,” little else went wrong in St. John before, during and after the storm.

“Our first assisted evacuation in St. John history went off flawlessly,” said Boe. “With the help of the school board and state officials, we were able to bus over 850 residents out of the parish very quickly and orderly. A lot of people stepped up to the plate to get residents out. We had volunteer bus drivers from the school board and from the parish, who drove over 20 hours with people they had never met before. This is when the best in people really comes out.”

Boe said the parish worked closely with the St. John Sheriff’s Office to make sure that deputies were getting what they needed. He said there were no reports of looting within St. John Parish.

Boe did say that the parish has been disappointed with the supply line from the state for the points of distribution of emergency supplies, particularly ice.

“St. John received one truckload of ice from the state,” said Boe. “We had to order four more trucks from an outside company in Texas to handle our demand. Our supplies did not get replenished and if it wasn’t for members of the private sector who stepped up to help, we never would have made it.”

St. John received help with distribution of hot meals from Piccadilly, Drago’s Restaurant of Metairie, and the American Red Cross. Boe said the groups spent days handing out meals on the East Bank and West Bank.

Boe did say that the National Guard troops, who came along with the point of distribution supplies, performed exceptionally well and were a great contribution to the recovery effort.

“We all learned a lot from this storm,” said Boe. “Everyone from Parish President (Bill) Hubbard on down had a pad ready to take note of what worked and what didn’t. Nothing is ever perfect, but things will get tweaked.”