St. Charles emergency officials report higher call volume, urge residents to sign up for alerts ahead of busy hurricane season

St. Charles Parish emergency management officials told the parish council Monday evening that the Emergency Operations Center logged nearly 16,000 calls in 2024—up from a typical 12,000 to 13,000—and that residents should sign up for the parish alert system ahead of a forecasted active hurricane season.

The presentation by the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness covered 2024 incident statistics, flood-event analysis, training and exercises, recent changes to National Hurricane Center products, and tips for residents on staying informed.

Jason Toste of the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness summarized the agency’s data review, saying: “Our typical calls are between 12,000 to 13,000 a year. Last year, we saw nearly 16,000 calls.” He told the council the EOC has kept digital station logs since 2001 and used that archive to classify 283 “unusual events” in 2024, broken down roughly as 35% industrial, 26% weather-related, 21% suspicious drone activity, 17% miscellaneous and 1% homeland-security related.

Toste said the parish recorded seven major alerts in 2024, including three tornado warnings, a January freeze, and a vessel collision and diesel spill in December that required protection of a water plant intake. He noted Hurricane Francine made landfall Sept. 11 as a Category 2 storm and prompted federal declarations for both public assistance and individual assistance.

On flooding, Toste said 79% of parish flood events since 2001 stemmed from heavy rainfall unassociated with tropical systems, while 21% came during tropical weather. He added that tropical-weather floods have tended to be more severe: “When you look at severity of flooding, the tropical weather events has certainly been more severe,” he said, while noting 57% of houses flooded occurred during severe rainfall events and 43% during tropical events.

The presentation included a warning about forecasting limitations: Toste said parish staff matched flood days to National Weather Service watches and warnings and found that 37% of the time the parish experienced flooding without any watches or warnings in effect. He urged residents to rely on local alerts and EOC monitoring in addition to national products.

Toste walked through changes at the National Hurricane Center that affect local planning: parish-level depictions of watches and warnings on forecast maps, extended forecast issuance for potential tropical cyclones from 48 to 72 hours, and a modest reduction in the official forecast “cone.” He said those changes should give local officials more time and clearer maps for decision-making.

Toste also highlighted preparedness gaps: 10,116 individuals have signed up for the parish emergency alert system while the parish contains more than 19,000 households, meaning over half of households are not receiving EOC alerts, he said. He provided the signup link (sepemergencyalerts.com) and urged residents to enroll.

Councilman Pelea praised EOC staff for their work during a recent outage and asked whether local telemetry stations preserve data when communications are interrupted; Toste said many systems buffer data and that parish staff recovered telemetry after the outage. Councilwoman O’Daniels asked what residents should do if the EOC is unreachable during an emergency; Toste said the parish has MiFi and spare cell phones for contingency use and that council members can relay urgent district needs to parish leadership.

Toste closed the presentation by noting exercises and training: the EOC hosted more than 3,000 man-hours of training last year and ran a multi-session disaster-build exercise using three-dimensional models with local, state and federal partners. He said the parish is building in-house training models to use year-round.

The council did not take formal action on the report; members asked questions and the presentation will inform parish hurricane planning and public communications ahead of the 2025 season.