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November 18, 1948 ~ December 5, 2020

ABBEVILLE — Funeral services will be held at 2:00 PM on Friday, December 11, 2020 at Vincent Funeral Home - Abbeville honoring the life of Deborah Ann Bertrand Stelly, 72, who died Saturday, December 5, 2020 at Acadia General Hospital. She will be laid to rest at St. Mary Magdalen Cemetery. Pallbearers will be Joseph Raymond Stelly, Jr., Ronald Stelly, David Stelly, Randall Stelly, Brian Regan, and Kendal Primeaux. Honorary pallbearers will be her grandsons.
Deborah enjoyed cooking for her family, attending her grandchildren’s functions at school, and spending time with her niece, Gloria.
She is survived by children, Joseph Raymond Stelly, Jr. and his wife, Leah of Meaux, Christine S. Mergist and her husband, Adam of Meaux, Ronald Stelly and his wife, LaKayla of Crowley, David Stelly and his wife, Mona of Indian Bayou, Vicky S. Regan,and her husband, Brian of Crowley, Randall Stelly of Meaux, Susan Stelly and companion, Lance Langlinais of New Iberia, and Ashley S. Primeaux and her husband, Kendal of Indian Bayou; twenty-three grandchildren, Joseph Raymond Stelly, III, Trenace M. Haley, Karlie Mergist, Paetyn Mergist, Linsey S. Moscano, Jared Stelly, Darrid Romero, Wyatt Stelly, Connor Stelly, Ellie Roche, Brody Mouton, Jacy Regan, Julia Leblanc, Emily Leblanc, Lauren Stelly, Colin Stelly, Dawn Marshall, Zoey Marshall, Darrian Langlinais, Douglas Langlinais, Avia Wood, Graci Primeaux, and Hunter Primeaux; and nine great grandchildren; siblings, Robert Bertrand of Meaux, Bertha B. Stelly of Meaux, Daniel Bertrand of Conroe, TX, and Dalton Bertrand of Dayton, TX; and a host of nieces and nephews.
She was preceded in death by her husband of 43 years, Raymond Stelly, Sr.; mother, Rita Renola Broussard; father, Dalton J. Bertrand; and brothers, Otis, Ricky and Darrell Bertrand.
The family requests that visiting hours be observed at Vincent Funeral Home - Abbeville, 209 S. St. Charles St., on Thursday, December 10, 2020 from 4:00 PM until 9:00 PM; Friday, December 11, 2020 from 8:00 AM until time of services.
Condolences may be sent to the family at www.vincentfuneralhome.net.
All funeral arrangements are being conducted by Vincent Funeral Home of Abbeville, (337) 893-4661.

TONY MARKS / VILLE PLATTE GAZETTE

VILLE PLATTE — For her work advocating for small businesses during her freshman term in the Louisiana State Senate, Sen. Heather Cloud received the Minuteman award from the National Federation of Independent Business.
The presentation from NFIB State Director Dawn Starns was made as the Rotary Club of Ville Platte met Nov. 24.
Cloud attributed the legislature’s pro-small business work this year to new legislators who share the same values as she does. “I am so pleased there a lot like me who have the same mindset,” she said.
She went on to say, “We really joined forces with some veteran legislators who understand everything else just follows suit whenever you help business and whenever you help job creators. Whenever you help provide jobs, you help families. That’s what we’ve done and what we’ll continue to do.”
According to Cloud, big pro-businesses legislation was passed during the latest extraordinary session in October. “One of the most important things we did was prevent the solvency tax from coming into play,” she said. “Our unemployment trust fund is going belly up. If we wouldn’t have done what we did, businesses could have and would have been taxed up to 30% on the back end.”
Cloud then spoke about her plans in future sessions which include reintroducing election integrity legislation which was recently vetoed by Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Starns then took the floor and said, “NFIB focuses on the issues of taxes, regulation, and law suits that really affect your everyday ability to be open, be successful, and grow your business.”
As she explained, one of NFIB’s biggest agenda items in Louisiana during 2021 is tax reform. “Tax structure really affects small business owners on both sides of the equation,” she said. “Most small business owners file taxes as individual. That individual income tax rate is very important, but that corporate rate is also important.”
“So,” she continued, “we’ll be really focused on what that tax reform looks like and making sure small businesses can benefit from whatever reform is done.”
During the previous meeting, held Nov. 17, the Rotary Club met with representatives from Savoy Cancer Center in Mamou.
Director of the center, Danette Cormier, spoke about the services provided and the benefits of cancer treatment close to home instead of traveling to larger cancer treatment facilities in Lafayette or Houston.
She said, “You do have a choice in where you receive your treatments. At Savoy Cancer Center, we take Christus’ mission to heart. We are extending the healing ministry of Jesus Christ daily. You may not be family when you walk through the door, but you definitely will be when you walk out.”

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.