RSS Feed

DELCAMBRE — A Mass of Christian Burial will be conducted for Willie Joseph Renard, age 86, at 10:00 am on Thursday, December 10, 2020 at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic Church in Delcambre. Fr. Buddy Breaux will officiate. Interment will follow at Migues Cemetery.
A gathering of family and friends will take place at Evangeline Funeral Home in Delcambre on Wednesday from 5:00 pm until 9:00 pm. A Rosary will be prayed at 7:00 p.m. The funeral home will reopen on Thursday at 8:00 am until the service time.
A native and resident of Delcambre, Mr. Renard passed away on Tuesday, December 8, 2020 at Iberia Medical Center in New Iberia.
Born on December 9, 1933 to the late Edvar and Asthasie LeBlanc Landry, Willie was one of five children. He was a kind and caring man who enjoyed the simple life of country living. Willie really liked being outdoors. He could often be found in the yard tending to his fruit trees or in one of his many vegetable gardens. He was also very in to alligator hunting and trapping. A loving father, grandfather, great grandfather, and friend, Willie will be truly and deeply missed by all those who knew and loved him.
He is survived by his; two sons, Trevlon Renard (Wendy) of Delcambre and Clint Renard (Tina) of Delcambre; one daughter, Fran R. Delccambre (Darcy) of Delcambre; seven grandchildren, Blaze Delcambre, Darcel Robin, Thad Renard, Tregg Renard, Trindi Renard, Zack Renard, and Jorey Renard; and twelve great grandchildren.
He is preceded in death by his loving wife, Jeanette “Tiff” Landry Renard; parents, Edvar and Asthasie LeBlanc Renard; and siblings, Clifton Renard, Julius Renard, Charles Renard, and Sis Landry.
Pallbearers will be Blaze Delcambre, Thad Renard, Tregg Renard, Zack Renard, Jorey Renard, and Darcy Delcambre.
The family of Mr. Renard would like to extend special thanks to the staff of Hospice of Acadiana for their care and support.
To view the on-line obituary and sign the guest register, please visit www.evangelinefuneralhome.com.
Evangeline Funeral Home of Delcambre is in charge of arrangements.

BATON ROUGE – During the record-breaking 2020 hurricane season, more people than ever turned to LSU’s Coastal Emergency Risk Assessment, or CERA tool, which visualizes ADCIRC storm surge predictions, to help protect people and assets against flooding. Although the official season finally ended last week, the researchers are busier than ever in improving the tool and preparing for next year—by working directly with the decision makers who rely on it.
“Nothing represents reality like reality,” said Windell Curole, general manager of the South Lafourche Levee District, as he watched the fifth named storm of the already record-breaking 2020 hurricane season make landfall in Louisiana with Hurricane Zeta last Oct. 28. “As an emergency manager, you look for every piece of information at your disposal. And when you make your call—more than a day ahead of landfall—and you’re telling people to evacuate or open or close flood gates, you’d better be right.”
He understands the risks involved with basing decisions on guesstimates or telling people the wrong thing—they won’t evacuate when they should; whether it’s this time, if you don’t tell them to, or next time, if you tell them to evacuate and it turns out they didn’t need to.
“You can evacuate to naturally high ground to get away from the surge, but if you are not out in time, you can’t leave,” Curole said. “Greater danger and loss of life comes with storm surge not wind.”
He and thousands of other emergency managers along the Gulf Coast and Atlantic Seaboard have come to rely on the CERA visualization tool developed at LSU to help make some of their most difficult decisions in guarding local populations against storm surge. CERA, which relies on storm surge predictions computed by the ADCIRC surge guidance system, or ASGS, developed in collaboration with the University of North Carolina, provides a quick visual interpretation of millions of computer data points to show flooding risks during a storm.
As Hurricane Eta zigzagged into the Gulf of Mexico about a week after Zeta and there was uncertainty about the storm’s track after it first devastated parts of Central America and then inundated Cuba and southern Florida, Curole sent LSU a straight-forward yet complicated question: What if Eta, instead of heading back across Florida as predicted, would come straight up across the Gulf of Mexico and hit Lafourche Parish? Then what?
Curole’s question reached Carola Kaiser, CERA lead developer and IT Consultant at LSU’s Center for Computation & Technology, or CCT, which houses seven servers that power CERA. She was fielding a record 243 new user login requests from across the nation, including the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, NASA, the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Health & Human Services, several oil and gas companies, local and national law enforcement, media outlets such as The Washington Post and ProPublica, and around Louisiana—levee districts, the National Guard, the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, or CPRA, and the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, or GOHSEP. She’d already established a White House Situation Room login.
What-if scenarios are an integral part of CERA for decision makers who can access layered maps in such high resolution they potentially show differences between neighboring houses. That information is not available to the general public at cera.coastalrisk.live, as that amount of detail easily could convey a false sense of certainty about what’s going to happen and what individual residents should do, which might contradict general area evacuation orders. Plus, predictions change. Every six hours, as the National Hurricane Center, or NHC, issues its forecast advisories, ASGS recomputes all available flood level data, allowing CERA to update its maps within an hour or two, in time for critical briefings at every level.
A key recipient of this information in Louisiana is the CPRA. Since 2018, the CPRA has provided annual funding to LSU to support the overall forecasting efforts of CERA and ASGS. Their primary concern is the management of the intricate system of tide and flood gates throughout the state, as well as overseeing the complicated system of levees.
“The CERA tool is very important to CPRA—not only for operation of hurricane risk-reduction systems, but also for the prepositioning of flood-fighting assets,” said CPRA Operations Chief Ignacio Harrouch. “Keeping the model as up-to-date as possible is key, and this is why CPRA continuously collects and shares bathymetric and topographic data with LSU to facilitate continued improvement of the model.”
This year, the LSU CERA website broke its seasonal record in visits for Hurricanes Laura and Marco, with 10,223 unique users.
“For the general public, we need to make the information as easy-to-understand and clear as possible, so we don’t give out any misguidance,” Kaiser said.
To read this full story including the history of CERA and LSU’s storm surge forecasting expertise, visit: https://www.lsu.edu/research/news/2020/1202-stormsurgeforecasting.php.

GUEYDAN – “Join us for a fun-filled festival in the park. There will be bands, vendors, and plenty more to see and experience,” says Gueydan Mayor Jude Reese.
After the successful launch of the Community Outreach Festival in 2019, the town came together to support one another and celebrate this vibrant Vermilion Parish community. But with the uncertainty of 2020, residents and businesses have been looking for a way to reinvigorate those good feelings.
“It’s time to get back together as a community and start doing things together. 2020 was a rough year for all of us, but 2021 can be something phenomenal!” adds Mayor Reese.
Gueydan's Winter Festival is designed to safely bring the people of Gueydan and Vermilion Parish together. Held on the City Hall grounds (600 Main Street), the community will host a day of outdoor fun for the whole family on January 30th. All that want to participate by setting up a table/booth to are invited to contact City Hall to express their interest.
Planning is well underway. The festival has already attracted 40 vendors to sell food, crafts, art, and sweets and musical entertainment will be available throughout the day from The Envies, TJ Gautreaux & Louisiana Soul, and DJ Sandman. Fun jumps, informational resources, and assistance agencies will also be on site.
“Gueydan has been a pleasure to work with – they really understand the importance of tradition and cooperation. With that sentiment in mind, we’ll be lending a hand any way we can. We encourage local vendors to sign up and people from around the area to mark their calendars,” says Anne Falgout with the Vermilion Economic Development Alliance.
For more information contact Gueydan Town Hall at (337) 536-9415 or Mayor Reese directly at (337) 223-1403. Check out the event page on Facebook, “Gueydan Winter Festival.” Details will be posted there as they are available.

The Acadiana Disaster Response Fund, a fund of Community Foundation of Acadiana (CFA) granted $5,000 to Christian Services Center of Abbeville for response efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic and Hurricanes Laura and Delta. The Acadiana Disaster Response Fund is activated by CFA during times of disaster or emergency and contributions are received locally, regionally, and nationally. This fund provides immediate relief and long-term recovery resources to those in the affected areas.
“In collaboration with the Vermilion Foundation, the Acadiana Disaster Response Fund, a fund of CFA was happy to be able to provide this much needed grant at a time that it was most needed. I am proud to be on the board of the Vermilion Foundation, a newly formed affiliate of CFA and encourage all people in our parish, that are able, to explore how they can help the Vermilion Foundation make an even bigger impact on our community through charitable giving” said Arlene Collee, Vermilion Foundation Advisory Board Member.
During our most recent times of disaster or emergency, CFA worked closely with The Vermilion Foundation to identify non-profit organizations and churches serving those most affected. Marcelo Davis with Christian Services Center said, “With your support we were able to help families displaced by Hurricane Laura and Delta. We temporarily housed two families at the local hotel. Then we helped them find permanent housing in Abbeville. We also served 1100 meals in the month of October in our Cafe. We gave about 5,000 pounds of groceries in that same month. All this with your help, thanks again for the support.”    
Vermilion Foundation, an Affiliate of Community Foundation of Acadiana, has a local advisory board made up of members from Vermilion Parish including Richard Broussard, Arlene Collee, Jim Doyle, Dr. Jack Gupta, Frey Hoyt, Earl Landry, Pat Patout, Dr. Jacob Demary Sellers, and Charles Sonnier.
CFA is one of south Louisiana’s premier philanthropic organizations benefiting our region, with a focus on the parishes of Acadia, Evangeline, Iberia, Lafayette, St. Landry, St. Mary, St. Martin and Vermilion. CFA’s core purpose is to build legacies and improve communities by connecting generous people to the causes they care about. Since its inception in 2000, CFA has realized cumulative gifts exceeding $290 million and has made cumulative grants of more than $150 million. You can learn more at www.cfacadiana.org.