Across Acadiana, the cleanup continues from this week’s flooding. Some are looking ahead, in hopes of preventing future flooding. In St. Mary Parish, some say this is the second time in the last six weeks.
It was a busy day in Berwick’s Country Club Estates neighborhood.
“It just kept coming and coming and coming and everything flooded. Water started coming in the house and we couldn’t stop it. It’s just messed up,” Jelena Bennett said.
Jelena Bennett has lived in her home for 17 years. This week, a first, water filled her home during a two-hour rain storm. This caused her family to take up all the carpet in their home.
“The water does go down fast once it stops raining and all, but we had so much rain the pumps couldn’t keep up,” Bennett said.
Others in the neighborhood say they didn’t get water this time, but they are frustrated with the drainage in the neighborhood.
“I’ve been living here for 30 years and I have never experienced this high of water. In the last six weeks, two months, we have had two torrential rainfalls that I don’t think any pumps could keep up with,” Belinda Boudreaux said.
“Fortunately I didn’t get any water, but unfortunately some of the neighbors did and its twice. we need to make sure. We need to go to our council meetings and find out what’s going on,” Aaron Brown said.
KATC took their concerns to Berwick Mayor, Duval Arthur.
“We have dug out all of our drainage ditches, we have checked all our pumps. We have done all kind of things. Cleaned out some storm drains that were stopped up, just thinking we were correcting the problem. We found out today that we are going to have to take some other measures,” Arthur said.
Those flooded say it can’t come soon enough.
“It makes it hard on you, and especially now during economic times when you have to redo the flooring and stuff like that. It’s expensive,” Brown said.
