Gov. Landry tours storm damage in West Feliciana Parish

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Governor Jeff Landry spent part of Monday morning, April 15, touring storm damage in West Feliciana Parish after a tornado touched down last week.

RELATED: NWS confirms at least 4 tornadoes in south Louisiana

“We’re just happy we’re able to come out here and make sure the parish gets what they need in order to get people back on their feet and back to their normal way of life,” the governor said.

The governor said he could see the patches where the tornado touched down, affecting 20 miles of the parish. Although Landry is thankful no one was seriously injured, his focus is now on streamlining resources to communities who need them the most.

Craig Fillingim watched the tornado touch down from his store window off Highway 61.

“It was actually scary because it was kind of bright out and it got dark pretty quick, rain was blowing, signs were going back and forth, stuff was going everywhere and we saw some big limbs flying down the highway,” explained Fillingim.

Luckily, Fillingim got the store generator up and running right after the storm. They were one of the only places in town that had power throughout the weekend.

“At some points, we’d have 30, 40 people in the store in line getting water, stuff they could eat, stuff like that. It’s been really, really busy,” said Fillingim.

After DEMCO replaced over 100 poles across East and West Feliciana Parishes, Sheriff Brian Spillman believes the remaining people still without power should be back online soon.

RELATED: DEMCO: Nearly all power restored following severe weather

“For the most part, we will have full power restored by the end of today,” said Sheriff Spillman. “That’s a big blessing to us because that’s been the biggest impediment.”

Governor Landry toured the remaining damage throughout the parish this morning. He said he’s working on a new process to get recovery resources out faster.

“National Weather Service and GOHSEP to accurately see where the weather was the worst and then that gives us, the State, an opportunity to concentrate on those parishes that need it the most,” said Landry.

Some of those resources the governor plans to send are extra crews to expedite the tree and debris removal process. Even though they’ve gotten a good start on it, Parish President Kenny Harvard said it’ll be a big help.

“That’s the good thing about living in the country, they all have chainsaws, so they helped us cut our way in and out,” said Harvard. “We never lost our water system, so water’s been good. We’ve had backup generators going on and now we’re kind of up and running”.

Fillingim is happy to help his community get back to normal.

“It was kind of great that we were open, and we were able to help them, and they really appreciated we were open and had things to help them get by with,” said Fillingim.

Landry said he hopes to have extra resources to help with that debris as soon as possible.

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