POPLARVILLE —
Earlier today emergency response officials were reporting only wind and some rains problems resulting from hurricane Isaac’s arrival in Pearl River County.
Danny Manley said there were 60 people being sheltered in two of the shelters in the county, the Poplarville First Baptist Church and Manna Ministries in Picayune. He said they are not seeing many people from Hancock or Harrison counties on the coast. He said normally there would be 50 or 60 people from each of those counties and he thinks some of the new shelters planned in those counties have changed that.
He said that has “greatly relieved us.”
“We had a half dozen from Harrison County and roughly the same from Hancock County. The rest of our shelter residents have been from Pearl River County – we are sheltering zero Louisiana residents, which is extraordinary. That’s never been the case.”
He said in the past there had been about 90-percent of shelter residents from Louisiana.
He said Tuesday evening the emergency responders of the county had gone into response mode to deal with any issue which might have arisen.
“Those guys are highly trained in Pearl River County and they do a great job,” he said. “We have had no issues where people have been overwhelmed … no injuries. We have had downed trees, power lines. Power companies are doing their best to get the power restored.”
He said they were hampered by high winds at times. “You just can’t get in a bucket truck and hold a cable when the winds are blowing 30-40 miles an hour.”
“It’s a constant battle.”
He said all the emergency support functions have been staffed at the EOC supplemented by other county employees from other offices that are closed for the storm.
He said at the time (approximately 10:30-11 a.m.) the only road closing he was aware of was Cooper Road in Picayune, due to a power line.
Pearl River County Road Manager Mike Mitchell reported a short time later there was road blockage at Rock Ranch Road that has been cleared and that crews were headed toward a reported downed tree along Liberty Road. He said at that time there has been nothing major in the county reported to the EOC.
Poplarville Fire Chief Michael White said Wednesday morning that the only problems to that time had been from some wind with limbs and rain but there had been nothing major.
A shelter report from the Red Cross Representative at the EOC said that only two shelters that are in partnership with the Red Cross, the Poplarville First Baptist Church and Manna Ministries, were open.
Manley said officially “this storm has not cooperated with anything that has been predicted, to this point.”
He cautioned though that the storm could stop at any time and continue to dump rain… “The hope is this thing should be out of here by seven or eight this evening … but if it doesn’t cooperate… .”
He advised if people have Internet capability, updates will be posted on the emergency management Facebook page every four hours. He particularly urged people to use that route if possible to limit EOC staff having to answer the telephones.
Mitchell said he estimated that 25-30 trees have been downed near roads in the county but that at that time only Liberty Road by the trailer park and Rock Ranch Road had to be cleared completely. He said there were six county crews out able to respond to these reports of trees on roads.
Manley said there had been approximately 5,000 sandbags handed out and there were 1,700 still available with another 10,000 bags scheduled to arrive.
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