NATCHEZ — Five years ago, the Miss-Lou was in the dark.

Hurricane Gustav had blown in Sept. 1, 2008, downing trees, dumping more than 10 inches of rain and knocking out electrical service out for five days for some customers. Homes were severely damaged and several structures in the historic downtown area had facings and even walls ripped off by the storm’s winds.

Falling trees caused most of the damage that was not directly caused by wind.

It was the last major storm to hit the Miss-Lou — Tropical Storm Isaac had mostly petered out by the time it reached the Adams County line last year — but officials say the lessons learned during Gustav haven’t gone to waste in the quiet years that followed it.

Adams County Emergency Management Director Stan Owens was only seven months into the job when the hurricane hit, and after the storm — which came the same year as a major flood event and a confirmed tornado — Owens resurrected the county’s dormant emergency planning committee.

The committee has representation from both of the local ambulance services, law enforcement, fire departments, Adams County Search and Rescue and local industry, he said.

“We meet every other month, and that way we are constantly seeing each other and constantly talking to each other, so we know who to talk to right away to know what job is going to get done by who,” Owens said.

“Getting the departments, the key figures together and involved in things like that earlier in the process, I think we do that much better now.”

Outside damaged residences and buildings, the most lingering effects of the storm were the extended power outages, which were caused in part by the fact that main power transmission lines into the area were downed by falling trees.

Entergy Spokesman Tim Runnels said the company takes every major storm event as a learning experience and tries to incorporate the hardest lessons learned into training exercises to help with response time.

This year, Entergy had a storm response drill that included scenarios taken from hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav and Ike, and was the most intense drill he has ever seen, Runnels said.

But the biggest lesson taken from Gustav was the need to improve communications with power customers during a storm event, he said.

“Our customers really just want to know what is going on,” Runnels said.

Since then, Entergy has improved its website to let customers know how long they might have to wait during an outage, and uses phone and text messaging services to update customers of the status of their service.

In Concordia Parish, Police Jury President Melvin Ferrington said the storm taught the parish a lot about being prepared early for such events.

The parish declared a state of emergency four days ahead of the storm and got all of its equipment ready to ensure a rapid response, he said, a move that paid off in the end.

“When we see something like this coming, we need to start preparing in advance,” he said. “When we see something like this, we will be more active on it in the coming years — if we think it is even coming our way, we will declare an emergency in the parish and get our mechanism in place for (federal disaster) reimbursement money and security.”

“If we have an emergency, we will be ready for the Red Cross to come in, for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to come, and we will get ready a little quicker — if we know it is coming, we will have everything possible to help with the disaster a week before it happens.”