Downtown bridge in Abbeville proved to be vital in historical flood

With so many people who stepped up to help others in the aftermath of last month’s historic flooding, picking the most important one among them would be impossible.
Selecting the most important piece of infrastructure for the City of Abbeville is not as difficult. The old bridge in downtown Abbeville remained open during the entire weekend of Aug. 13, keeping the event from being somehow worse for the city. That’s the way Mayor Mark Piazza sees it.
“During an event like that,” Piazza said while speaking to members of the Abbeville Rotary Club, “you never know what is going to come up. You just have to be prepared. The old bridge downtown was critical for us in that preparation. If we lost that bridge, we couldn’t get first responders across the river to rescue people. We couldn’t get fire trucks across to put out fires. We couldn’t get an ambulance across the river.”
That is because the old bridge was the only one in operation...in the area.
“Every bridge from Intracoastal City to Lafayette was inoperable expect for the bridge in downtown Abbeville,” Piazza said. “The Perry Bridge was out. The new (By-Pass) bridge was out because they had the big dip that flooded by Burger King that would not allow people to pass. The Milton Bridge was out and the E. Broussard Bridge was out.
“That was the only bridge from Intracoastal City to Lafayette that was still operable.”
That became questionable as debris from the rising Vermilion River began to pile up next the bridge.
“You had so much debris banged up against the bridge,” Piazza said. “There was a large piece of floating dock jammed under it.”
Abbeville officials placed a call to the Department of Transportation and Development (DOTD).
“We asked them to open the bridge to let all this debris out,” Piazza said. “They told us the bridge was locked down. The water was as high as the bridge. The turbulence was just banging against the bridge. They told us that if they raised it, they would never be able to get it back down. The force of the water would not have allowed it to get seated back down.
“That is why they would not lift it.”
The city then brought an excavator to begin removing the debris.
“We tried to pull as much of it out as we could,” Piazza said. “We fought with debris for three days to make sure we kept that bridge operable. If we would have lost it, we would have not been able to get emergency vehicles back and forth across the bridge. It’s something you don’t think about having to deal with.
“The thought was scary. It really was.”
Projects done by the city to help drainage worked to keep things from getting scary in a couple of areas of the city.
“One was in Mount Carmel Heights,” Piazza said. “We spent $275,000 improving the drainage in Mount Carmel Heights five years ago. It paid off. No one in that area flooded to my knowledge. The water drained well. It was a great project that we did in the neighborhood.”
Another important project helped an area of the city near John Hardy Drive and Franks Alley, known as the “Bottom.” The city built a system that pumps water into a nearby retention pond.
“The retention pond is a 35-acre pond,” Piazza said. “It drains the Bottom. It’s called the Bottom because its a very low area of town, where a lot of people have historically flooded, over and over. To my knowledge, there’s only one or two homes that flooded in August. This project did save a lot of people in the area. That was a $1.2 million project. It was money well spent.
“We have some flood control that worked.”