What progress has been made since Hurricane Rita?
Lake Charles - Thursday, September 24 marks the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Rita hitting Southwest Louisiana. At the time, local leaders had already been paying close attention to how New Orleans had reacted to Hurricane Katrina and now it was their turn.With just a few days warning, Southwest Louisiana residents heeded the warnings and evacuated for Hurricane Rita. That's always a fear among emergency leaders. Hal McMillin was president of the Calcasieu Parish Police Jury in the fall of 2005.
"It's all about the people," said McMillin. "When we called the evacuation order, they listened. Of course they had seen what had happened with Hurricane Katrina and once we asked them to evacuate, we probably had 90 to 95 percent of the people leave SWLA."
Current Sulphur Mayor Chris Duncan was a city councilman then.
"Are people going to leave? We think there are going to be more that will be staying here, so that's one of the things we've got to be bettered prepared for..those people that are actually going to stay," said Duncan.
"That's a big concern," said McMillin. "If you have people here and you have a major direct hit like we had with Rita, there's going to be a death toll. There's going to be a lot of injured people and loss of life. You just don't want to see that happen."
Both leaders say lessons were learned in the response after Rita.
"We've upgraded some of those generators and some of those systems in place," said Duncan. "We still have a few more areas that we need to get a few more generators in and we have a plan for the future."
"Our fire stations, any type of emergency type preparedness positions. They have been hardened so they will withstand storms," said McMillin. "Back up generators for our water systems. Our fire departments are stronger and more prepared now."
Both men say they hope a storm like Rita never happens again, but it one should come their way, a textbook of lessons was learned from that 2005 storm.
Copyright 2015 KPLC-TV. All rights reserved.