IBERIA PARISH, La. (KLFY) – Iberia Parish President, Larry Richard, held a meeting regarding hurricane season, FEMA, and updates on hurricane preparation and response was held this morning in Iberia Parish.

The National Weather Service came by to educate listeners about storms and how to prepare for disasters such as hurricanes. The Iberia Parish Director of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Prescott Marshall applauded the weather service for their work helping the parish prepare for the upcoming season.

“We get great support from them because you want to hear from the experts and what is the forecast and what are the forecast tools available to us from the weather service,” Marshall said.

Talks about the improvement of evacuation preparedness were discussed, involved detours on highway 90 as construction is occurring.

“If there is a major evacuation using Highway 90 towards Lafayette to get to I-10, construction is going to be a significant problem if we have big numbers of people evacuating,” Marshall said.

Another important topic discussed was the encouragement of volunteers in the parish when it comes to disasters. He said they rely significantly on volunteer work to be able to accomplish what needs to be done during storms.

Presoctt believes the most important reason to be prepared for storms in the parish is because of the lack of resources and good health a lot of people in the parish have.

“We have a lot of folks who don’t have the resources that they might need to say evacuate,” Marshall said. “If they don’t have family to turn to and they are going to turn to the community. We have to be ready for that.”

Iberia Parish encourages all residents to sign up for Iberia PINS, which is the parish’s official emergency alert notification system.