entergy is proud to support programming on lpb and greener practices that preserve louisiana the goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet additional support provided by the fred b and ruth b ziegler foundation and the ziegler art museum located in jennings city hall the museum focuses on emerging louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for southwest louisiana and the foundation for excellence in louisiana public broadcasting with support from viewers like you once this thing spun up the hurricane center was on it are we seeing a new breed of hurricanes physically and mentally it's taxing on us funeral directors struggling under kovitz weight ed ogeron is a defendant in two different lawsuits how hot is it for lsu's coacho hi everyone i'm kara saintsier and i'm andre moreau tonight we begin our 45th season of swi with a lot to get to but first it's hurricane and storm fatigue it continues to overwhelm many of us especially those hit hard and trying to clean up debris 51 thousand still don't have power and some areas have not had garbage pick up for the past 18 days that's been the case for the majority of new orleans a problem worsened by hurricane ida which created a surplus of debris and trash in a press conference yesterday mayor latoya cantrell said the city hasn't had a workforce large enough for the job but that emergency crews will be deployed today the emergency crews will only dispose of bags and debris that don't fit into garbage bins as they are the most pressing health hazards sanitation director matt torre said the city hall will set up an online map for residents to track the progress of that effort we know that it was compacted due to hurricane ida no doubt about that the contractors are now um are having to work in terms of the workload three to five times greater than what we saw pre-hurricane and with the workforce of about 25 percent there's absolutely no magic wand that's going to solve this overnight and if it were one i would have waived it already but the one that i have been waiting is that with my team to collectively provide a solution and find a solution to get the trash picked up the solid waste picked up sooner rather than later tropical storm nicholas which was briefly a hurricane did not make any of that easier on new orleans or the state the city experienced some flooding as did many other areas of louisiana the storm dumping inches of rain in pocketed portions what was left of nicholas stalled over the state all week long giving us on and off rain and flash floods that impact is finally dissipating though on the coveted front lsu is now enforcing the vaccine mandate in a tweet ernie ballard a spokesperson for the school wrote that 78 students will be unenrolled for not following vaccine requirements if students submitted a covet test for the last three months or showed proof of vaccination by 4 pm today they had the option to re-enroll ballard says some of the 78 students in that group showed interest in returning to class any who decided not to comply will receive a 50 refund from the university last month lsu president dr william tate said students would have until september 10th to show proof that they started the vaccination process they have until october 15th to show now that they are fully vaccinated and now let's go to other news making headlines across the state the records will show hurricane ida is to blame for two more deaths in louisiana the health department says a 69 year old man and 85 year old woman both from metro baton rouge died from excessive heat during the extended power outage caused by ida the total of souls now taken by the storm stands at 28. among the many tragic stories in the aftermath of ida are the deaths of seven nursing home residents they were evacuated to a warehouse in tangipahoa parish where inspectors say conditions became unsafe once the storm struck state aarp leaders say ida showed that we continue to fail our most fragile citizens authorities captured and killed a 12-foot alligator believed to have attacked a slidell man in flood waters caused by ida human remains were found in the gator's stomach the saint tammany parish coroner is working to identify them the wife of 71 year old timothy satterly says a gator attacked her husband in the high waters surrounding their home satterly has been missing ever since tulane's football team plans to play its first on-campus home game of the season september 25th against uab the green wave is one and one forced to play its first two games away from home they lost a close one and then second ranked oklahoma then crossed morgan state in a game played in birmingham tulane students will also return to campus that same week louisiana native haley arsenau is spending the rest of the week in space she's part of the first all-civilian crew that blasted off wednesday night and is spending three days in orbit without professional astronauts haley is one of lpb's 2003 louisiana young heroes and she's a cancer survivor who now works at st jude's children's hospital it's a place where she spent much of her childhood a big lpb happy birthday to 112 year old lawrence brooks of new orleans mr brooks is the oldest living veteran from world war ii governor john bel edwards greeted brooks at his home on his big day while others drove by his house during a covet era celebration keep in mind mr brooks has now seen two pandemics in his lifetime born september 12 1909 in the east feliciana town of norwood brooks has lived in new orleans since 1929 after he served in the war as part of the 91st engineer battalion he returned to the crescent city and worked as a forklift operator he retired when he was 70 42 years ago last year louisiana recorded 2 121 drug-related deaths that's a 43 increase from 2019. the national average increased by only 29 percent the louisiana department of health links a lot of these deaths to the pandemic and in honor of recovery awareness month we'll share a snippet of adam javelin's story he's a recovering addict spreading hope to those struggling with addiction you have to be primary not secondary you have to be fatal you have to be chronic and you have to be progressive right so you progressively get worse it chronically gets well those four things like cancer alcohol is addiction that's why the death rate is so high we'll have more of his story with you next week there is a new forecasting model to predict gulf of mexico hurricanes it's just published by lsu researchers hurricane forecasts have used data from the atlantic basin historically but researchers say the addition of the data from the gulf will better predict how many storms that we might see we've been ground zero for the worst storms the past two years the hurricane ida it's spun up in the caribbean relatively weak system barry kyme is the state climatologist and also a professor at lsu and he's our go-to expert to discuss weather and hurricanes and we are talking to him more often in this case focusing on hurricane ida once this thing spun up the hurricane center was on it and they forecasted this thing to hit louisiana as a category a major hurricane category three or four so i was shocked at how good that forecast was very early on just as the storm was getting ginned up in the caribbean it crosses over western cuba as in cuba the mass tears the storm up so it it's a crippled storm entering the gulf of mexico but the gulf of mexico was extraordinarily warm extraordinarily warm and about to encounter the loop current in the gulf this current takes on odd shapes and forms well this the the basically the shape of this current created a warm water super highway for ida to ride all the way to louisiana and it fed energy into the storm and as a result the hurricane center had held steadfast with their forecasts for the storm to gin up into a major hurricane it even got stronger than he originally thought it would much stronger in spite of it taking longer to get to that even first point and it was when it intensified it went from 85 to 150 overnight so people who didn't pay attention if they didn't would have gone to bed and then woken up the next day and seen a super hurricane at the door yeah so if you were just looking at the the actual data and the storm itself you would have never guessed that that was going to happen and what happened to places like grand isle houma and many more devastation a category hurricane similar to hurricane laura that walloped southwest louisiana and lake charles a year ago the storms that we're seeing of today they seem to ramp up more quickly the term rapid intensification we're hearing more frequently and there can be rainfall amounts that come down seemingly more excessively what is that saying yes so the rapid intensification we in in the last few years i mean it's just been been scary how many storms have undergone this rapid intensification process and um i mean you know four landfalls for us last year um you know two major hurricanes last year and get hit again this year but even beyond that you throw in hurricane michael and and harvey and all the rains that that produced um i mean there's something unusual going on right now the big question is are we just in a very odd period or is climate change playing some role or is it some combination of both there's most likely some combination of both of those what we're asking ourselves in the scientific community is it is this just because we have better surveillance of the storms and and and that's something we're still trying to better understand uh you know what does what does our understanding of storms now mean to what you know how we were monitoring storms in the past and what we obviously were getting rapid intensification in the past as well but are we getting more of it now we probably are right now we certainly are seeing some odd things taking place you know with the with this rash of major hurricane activity uh big question is what does this mean in the bigger picture i mean it was a period from the from the mid-1920s to the mid-1960s where you know a lot of our coasts especially south florida just getting hammered with storms and some of those probably did undergo some of these same kinds of processes for louisiana audrey in 1957 and betsy in 1965 punctuated this era camille left a huge mark on mississippi in 1969. and what about plain old afternoon rainstorms that we've always had they sure seem different now afternoon rainstorms that produce rain quicker faster harder than previous amounts is that saying anything about the current climate situation all of that is true yeah what we're finding is storms are getting shorter in duration and more intense and we're not necessarily getting more rainfall total at the end of the year but the rains you know the way it's being distributed over the year is changing and it's definitely coming down in bigger bursts and that is consistent with what we'd expect in a global climate change scenario where the atmosphere can just store and carry more moisture and when you get the right mechanism to tap that moisture you can squeeze it out and bring it out and put it on the ground a lot more quickly the amount of flash flooding that we've experienced just this year i mean the may event is a great example there was over 17 inches produced in just a few hours over in lake charles and a lot of the area had 15 inches and and in that same event we've had some you know pretty massive flooding over here in baton rouge and then we've had subsequent events that have created quite a bit of flooding across this area so flash flooding has become a big problem it's a daunting future i mean and not only do we have you know the impacts of climate change playing itself out and we're likely seeing some of that with uh you know with the hurricane frequencies of the major hurricane frequencies that we've been seeing the amount of rainfall is being produced not only by hurricanes but by other systems and then we compound that with all this uh uh increased urban development in places that are work that are even more vulnerable than than where we've ever you know done urbanization in the past so that combination is really leading to some massive problems across the state of louisiana and really all over the country cova cases are on the decline but the drop isn't enough for some funeral directors the number of deaths is starting to overwhelm the industry cynthia miller a director from miller and daughter mortuary says her workload has doubled since the delta surge she's part of a growing number of directors saying that this trend is not sustainable louisiana funeral director cynthia miller is overwhelmed by the number of cova cases for miller and daughter mortuary each case is personal and they've nearly doubled since july in the spring we were very busy uh we seem to be much more busier uh this season i can tell you from the end of july to august we probably did 60 to 65 cases 60 to 65 people in a month may not seem like a lot of work but her business isn't built to handle more than 20 deaths in a month pre-pandemic the miller and daughter mortuary only averaged five funerals per week in spring 2020 numbers jumped to about 10 funerals per week and now her funeral home is picking up as many as five bodies a day she says the pandemic is a direct link because nearly 75 percent of the deaths are unvaccinated coveted cases these deaths are preventable which is the real difference at least that's what feels like the difference um out of all of these films we've had i've had one person that was vaccinated okay all of the others that died or not the vaccine or complications from the vaccine we're not we're not uh vaccinated okay so it just it it hurts my heart because family members are left um devastated and it just in my mind it just seems like it's unnecessary because perhaps the vaccinated vaccination could have the outcome would have been different miller isn't the only one struggling under the weight of covet in vernon parish the lobby memorial funeral home is also seeing death surge the owner robert lawrence says he saw an increase in 2020 just like miller did he says numbers increased by 25 percent totaling 400 funerals for the year in 2019 he'd have only seen around 250. we weren't prepared you know we weren't prepared for that influx of of that many a normal month for us is 18 20 calls and in the last year now our average is probably 28 calls in july as delta variant cases increased lobby memorial saw another jump lawrence says he'll likely surpass 2020's numbers he's already at 325 deaths now keep in mind we still have three months left of 2021 and the louisiana department of health warns we could see another surge in october population is not um that many people other than uh in vernon parish where the leesville location is fort pogue you know we're used to having more people than what the population outside of the military base is but our general population we are accustomed to doing you know 18 services a month uh possibly our facility is not capable of dealing with you know 40 a month so we we're being very conscious and uh trying to be careful about what we do every employee that works for me has just had to step up and and sometimes work um 16 18 hours a day like miller lawrent only has a small group of employees when they get overwhelmed with the number of people coming in sometimes it takes longer to prep the bodies for burial which creates a backlog he says this pace isn't sustainable without more employees louisiana law requires that that certain people can only do certain things and so you know we only have we have enough licensed licensed employees to cover our normal um what i would say you know 250 funerals a year services a year and then you add another 25 on top of that well that throws the licensed people into doing more things the unlicensed people doing and doing what they can to help but yeah i mean physically and mentally it's taxing on us cases are still extremely high in louisiana peaking around september 1st of this year but numbers are declining slowly we're now averaging 58 deaths per week which is slightly less than august when the highest seven day average was 63. miller says she's seen a small drop in funerals but her mortuary is still overwhelmed she says there's only one way to fix that and it's getting more people vaccinated the thing that i would like to say if you're not going to get vaccinated and of course that's your choice at the very least stay inside as much as possible wear your mask it's real this this virus is real miller says that five bodies a day is her limit if cases build past that she'll need to hire more employees to keep up with the demand for as long as ed osran is lsu's head coach they will not win anything of significance again you just heard from matt muscona he is a sports talk radio guru in the baton rouge area with a syndicated talk show after further review that airs a bunch of places you know after the sex scandal after covet after hurricanes lsu fans were ready for something exciting to look forward to this fall with a football team they were just a one year removed from a national championship last year's five and five team considered an aberration but then they played ucla they were favored and uh matt i bring you in here today to talk about the lsu football season that feels stranger than any i've ever experienced and it seemed to happen in that ucla game that there was just a turn a feeling a lack of confidence suddenly where it went in with confidence i think 2020 was either going to be the outlier or 2019 was going to be the outlier and this season really was going to prove which one was which and i think everyone who was sitting in the rose bowl that day and i was there kind of by the third quarter and certainly by the start of the fourth quarter realized maybe 2019 was the outlier maybe 2020 is more of the norm of what we're gonna expect from this lsu program i think that's the feeling you sort of adequately described that a lot of people started to feel as that game played out and the tweets exploded after the game where people disgruntled 20 000 people went out there and so things really lit up uh in a way that they hadn't before and immediately coach oh was on the hot seat yeah i would tell you that i think the the closest comp would be 2016. at the end of 2015 joe oliva was trying to fire les miles he ended up keeping his job and right when they lost to wisconsin open the 2016 season there felt like an inevitability that that was going to be it i think fans are kind of in that same spot now you have an athletic director that very likely any athletic director wants to hire their own coach that's a legacy higher at a place like lsu you hire a football coach so scott woodward no doubt at some point is going to want to hire his own coach there's so many off the field antics that that you alluded to and when you couple all of that within an inadequate performance on the field that mountain of of evidence against a coach starts to build and that pressure's sometimes too much to overcome you like to call uh kocho uh the ceo of 100 million dollar corporation which is asu football and that's what he was sort of branded when he came here he would he would delegate right and he would sort of recruit and run things in that fashion what kind of job has he done let's let's say since the national championship season well i think you can 2019 is really like a sandwich right is his career as a sandwich for 2019 in the middle and that's kind of the outlier because if you're the ceo and you're expected to manage people and make good hires well you look at bo pelini was a bad hire scott linehan was a bad hire right now it certainly looks like the two new coordinators that he hired aren't panning out so far if you know you're coaching for your job and you hire two coordinators that have never done that job before that doesn't show great forethought there you know les miles was in a similar situation after 2008 and he brought in john chavis who at the time was a very proven sec defensive coordinator all of that then you couple with it the racial injustice protests of a year ago i think ed ozeron mismanaged that with his roster it just it's been one thing upon another and then you have a lot of of just negative pr from and the coach himself has uh his personal life has sort of been on display since he got divorced from his wife i think he was seen around l.a as a matter of fact the day before the game is his focus there does it seem not to be there i think that's a very fair question to ask i mean it was before this season you know you know the thing that i say ed ozil is a single man and he's there is no judgment here he's entitled to do as a single man whatever he wants to do as a single man the problem that i had that his bosses have i think that lsu fans probably have the social media part when that when your personal life starts to bleed into and reflect negatively upon the football program as a whole that's when you really have an issue and that's what's starting to happen when you have the exact question you asked andre when you see the results on the field it is fair to ask is this person solely focused on on the reason that he's here or are these antics negatively affecting his job and title ix is the big thing we haven't really delved into yet he was called to testify didn't we gave a statement that was at a senate hearing early in the summer there's more expected with title ix in the coming months it's far from over the u.s department of education is investigating lsu for their mishandling of title ix there are two active lawsuits ed ogeron is a defendant in two different lawsuits it it is far from over and that might be the thing that ultimately is is the the nail and that ozone is coffin at lsu oh quickly about the team they played mcneese not impressive they play eastern no they play one of them this weekend then they go to mississippi state which you know normally that's a w but it doesn't really look like it what do you see the season being most people before said nine three ten two yeah i was a nine and three guy but i had a beating ucla i think they'd be hard for us to get to eight before they have enough talent to where they're going to win games andre but it's probably not going to be enough red ocean they're probably a six and six or seven and five team that would be a big big disappointment it would be a massive disappointment and if that's the case lsu would be hiring a new coach all right you're on 104.5 in baton rouge but syndicated a bunch of places and you're on a bunch of other things too you can't even name all the things you're on i always say if you can spell my name you can find me good luck with the vowels all right matt thanks so much for being here i appreciate it this coming tuesday september 21st lpb is teaming up with mental experts from across the state for a virtual event we would love for you to join us the focus is the challenges of high school and college students what they're facing since the start of covid which for us includes a number of hurricanes the well-beings tour is september 21st from 6 to 7 30. and for more information on this you can go to wellbeings.org lpb and everyone that is our show for this week remember you can watch anything lpb anytime wherever you are with our lpb app you can catch lpb news and public affairs shows as well as other louisiana programs you've come to enjoy over the years and please like us on facebook twitter and instagram for everyone at louisiana public broadcasting i'm andre mora and i'm kara sincere until next time that's the state we're in entergy is proud to support programming on lpb and greener practices that preserve louisiana the goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet additional support provided by the fred b and ruth b ziegler foundation and the ziegler art museum located in jennings city hall the museum focuses on emerging louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for southwest louisiana and the foundation for excellence in louisiana public broadcasting with support from viewers like you you