I want to let you know that (Sunday) during the rain storm, I called 911 non emergency to report street flooding and ask for the parish to close the street I live on, Madewood Road in Riverlands. I was told the parish workers were out doing that.

Not one parish worker showed up to close the street. The water was going up in my driveway and on some streets, the water was up to some people’s garage.

I called 911 emergency to report a driver pulling out of the road and driving down the sidewalks to avoid the flooded street. I was told an officer would be out.

A while after that,a man living down the street was out trying to slow traffic down and getting into verbal altercations with speeding drivers. I called 911 again because I have yet to see a police car come.

Not one police car came until about one hour after my initial call. After some of the water had gone down about an hour later, four to five police did come out to see what was going on but didn’t stop to talk to me or any other person that I could see.

It was too late at this point. Neighbors were policing the streets. No parish worker ever came to close the street.

The person that had water up to their garage pulled their truck in the road to stop traffic from pushing water into their home. The parish did not turn on the water pumps, and I know this because there was no pooling at all from the drains that are in from of my house or the drains down the street.

A few weeks ago when we had all that hard rain, the streets never pooled water, the pumps were on , I saw pooling by the drains.

It took the water more than an hour to get down the drains. I feel this is unacceptable. How can we trust our parish for a hurricane when we can’t trust them for a rain storm?

If the parish and police cannot be everywhere, then they should allow some reliable residents to have barricades to put up when the roads are flooded to protect their property.

Tina Ory, LaPlace