Hurricanes Gustav and Ike

31 August - 3 September & 11-21 September 2008

Jefferson County experienced a mandatory evacuation due to the threat from Hurricane Gustav. Although the area suffered minimal damage since Gustav made landfall approximately 200 miles to the east in Cocodrie Louisiana (just south of Houma), school was cancelled for the 2 days following Labor Day, and many families left town for several days. This turned out to be a dry run for Hurricane Ike.

When the mandatory evacuation was issued for Hurricane Ike, many residents at first chose not to evacuate since the evacuation the prior week strained financial resources and again the hurricane did not seem to be likely to hit Jefferson County. However, when news broke on 12 September that the storm surge was projected at 14-17 feet, most residents did leave. Hurricane Ike did extensive damage to the area with flooding in Beaumont, Orange (where the levy failed), and (almost all of) Bridge City in additional to trees and power lines down throughout the area. Entergy determined that the damage to the electricity nfrastructure was worse than that caused by Hurricane Rita in 2005. The Sabine power plant in Bridge City suffered flooding, but Entergy was able to reroute power from the north. Entergy restored power to Groves, Port Neches, Nederland, and Port Arthur between 19 and 22 September. Many residents chose to return prior to power being restored, but school did not resume until 25 September. To the kids and teachers, it felt like there were three first days of school this year.

A number of volunteers and parents of Pack 287 experienced damage to homes and businesses, but had things well enough in hand to restart cub scout activities by the September pack meeting (which fortunately fell on the last day of the month). Several events were cancelled or rescheduled. Round up at Van Buren was rescheduled twice (once due to Gustav, once due to Ike), the Popcorn Kickoff was merged into the September pack meeting, Scout Day at the Astros game was cancelled by the Astros (since Houston was also greatly impacted), a Popcorn Show & Sell at Bruce's Market Basket was cancelled, and the pack campout at Claiborne West park was cancelled.