Governor Edwards says the state is planning for an active hurricane season and making adjustments to existing preparedness guidelines with COVID-19 in mind.
Edwards says shelters are a major piece of the state’s response efforts but now is not the best time for congregate mega shelters, so they’re having to adjust.
“We have prepositioned there some tents within the4 shelters so that people can have an area within the shelter that is sort of self-contained if that is necessary,” says Edwards.
Edwards says another issue they’re trying to solve is the potential lack of help from humanitarian groups who the state relies upon to provide aid in a crisis.
“Quite frankly the American Red Cross volunteers are not going to be available to us as as they normally are because many of those volunteers are in that vulnerable age category,” says Edwards.
Edwards says the state is also working to establish new deals with our neighbors to house residents should the occasion call for it, despite COVID-19 still being prevalent here.
“In a public health emergency as you can imagine just like we don’t want to do congregate sheltering here they don’t want to do congregate sheltering of our people in their states either,” says Edwards.
No evacuations are currently planned for Tropical Storm Cristobal, which Edwards says could, in a worst-case scenario, dump 10-15 inches of rain over a 48 hour period on certain parts of the state.
Comments