St. Landry Parish President Jessie Bellard gave his daily weather update this morning around 11 a.m.
Bellard says he'll be doing these daily on the parish's Facebook page as long as the weather event continues.
On Sunday, he said that the water is rising in the northern part of the parish a lot sooner than expected. He said some houses are flooding, and while that was expected - it wasn't expected this soon.
In the Port Barre area, on Bayou Courtableu Road coming into town, the road is flooded and some camps and homes have taken on water, he said.
Bellard said he won't issue a mandatory evacuation.
"You know your area, you have history with rain, you know what you can expect," Bellard said.
That being said, he said the water from the history rain event in Avoyelles Parish has not arrived yet, and a rain event in St. Martin Parish Sunday morning means water's coming up from the south, as well.
"Early this morning, St. Martin Parish got 5 inches of rain in an hour - and that's where a lot of our water goes," Bellard said. "We have water on the north and on the south, and we're going to deal with it. We do have your crews working. We're 24 hours now at the emergency operations center. The shelters are open."
If residents chose not to evacuate, Bellard is asking that they call his office to notify officials that they'll be staying so they know how many people are out there if they eventually need rescue or supplies.
"Today we'll start going to each home to visit with people who are there. We want to be sure we reach every single person as best we can," Bellard said. "Crews are going to be going house to house, starting north and going south. If nobody's home, we'll leave an orange tag with information on it. We're trying to do what we can to inform everyone of what's happening."
Bellard said the cards have numbers for help, for shelters, and for reporting damage.
"A lot of water is coming. I don't know how to stress that more than how we're doing here. I'm not doing any mandatory evacuations; we're going to let the people decide," he said. "All we're asking is that you contact us and let us know you'll be staying home so we can have an idea of how many people we'll have in certain areas in case we need to go out and get you or bring you supplies.
"You've lived at your house. You understand the terrain, what kind of rain raises the levels. Use your own judgment. We're advising you should evacuate to a shelter or a relative's house but again it's up to you to decide and let us know that you are staying home."
Bellard urged residents to report damage and rising water; he said nobody should assume officials know what's going on everywhere.
For help, to report you're staying home or to report rising water or flooding, call the government office at 337-948-3688.
Here's the link to his update.
