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S u n d ay, S e p t e m b e r 14, 2025
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La. plans to repair or replace 62 bridges
LETHAL HEAT LOUISIANA’S QUIET DISASTER
New agency targets end of next year for completion BY ALYSE PFEIL | Staff writer
Heat haze distorts Canal Street and streetcars during a heat advisory in New Orleans in July.
STAFF PHOTOS By SOPHIA GERMER
HEAT DEATHS RISE AS REGION WARMS Humidity makes it harder for people to cool themselves, making Louisiana especially vulnerable
BY SAM KARLIN | Staff writer
ä See HEAT, page 8A
Sheila Borskey wears a bracelet locket with a picture of her late husband, Dornell Anderson, who died in August 2023 of heart complications exacerbated by extreme heat while mowing his lawn.
Louisiana’s heat death toll 80
Total deaths in the state 25-year average
60
40
20
0
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Source: CDC Wonder
ä For more on this story, go to nola.COM
WEATHER HIGH 92 LOW 73 PAGE 8B
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ä See BRIDGES, page 11A
Historic cypress plank displayed at Capitol goes missing
First in a series
The heat set in before sunrise in Algiers. Outside his yellow brick home, Dornell Anderson ventured into the stagnant August air, trying to finish yard work before the temperature became unbearable. He mowed his lawn, facing the neighborhood where he had spent his whole life, from playing football in the street to building a family with his wife. Then a neighbor saw him collapse. His wife, Sheila Borskey, felt her stomach drop when she got the phone call from the West Bank hospital where her husband had gone from working as a cook to being treated as a patient. She rushed to see him. Anderson, just 60 years old, had died of a heart attack. The Orleans Parish coroner said his death was the result of heart complications exacerbated by the extreme heat. It was the 25th death in New Orleans that summer to be classified as heat-related. Anderson was active and in good health, making his death surprising to his family. He frequently roller bladed at the Terrytown skating rink where he was nicknamed “Tank.” “He just was outside cutting grass for a little bit,” Borskey said. “It was just hot.” Anderson’s death came near the end of a historically scorching summer in 2023, when Louisiana recorded an alarming number of heat-related deaths: 86, the most on record. That tally wasn’t a fluke. Deaths from heat are rising across Louisiana as the world warms. Over the past five years, heat fatalities have soared across the state, climbing to an annual average of 45 per year. That’s nearly four times the annual death rate over the preceding two decades, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Louisiana’s new transportation agency is quickly ramping up, and its first major task is fixing 62 small bridges scattered across rural parts of the state by the end of next year. It’s the opening gambit for state lawmakers and Gov. Jeff Landry as they seek to accomplish what they argue the state’s lumbering Department of Transportation and Development has for years failed to do — efficiently maintain thousands of miles of Louisiana roads and bridges. Legislators this spring announced they planned to take Landry “extraordinary measures” to prove transportation infrastructure projects can be done quickly, effectively and safely. With Landry’s backing, they created the new Office of Louisiana Highway Construction, an entity independent of the DOTD designed to more swiftly fix minor thoroughfares that don’t involve federal money. The bridges — including several in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans areas — are relatively small: Most are between 25 and 150 feet in length, less than 30 feet wide, and cross ditches, canals, creeks and bayous. Project costs for most of the structures, the majority of which will be torn out and replaced, are estimated by the highway office to be between $1 million and $3 million apiece.
’24 Staff graphic
Whereabouts of the 1,200-year-old artifact is unknown
BY TYLER BRIDGES | Staff writer An ancient, 20-foot cypress wood board that held a prominent place at the State Capitol for decades has gone missing, and no one seems to know where it is. Or at least no one is admitting it. The board was cut from a tree in Livingston Parish near Lake Maurepas that was estimated to be 1,284 years old, according to words etched into the flat plank. Former House Speaker Clay Schexnayder said that, for 10 years, the board was on the wall of his district office in Gonzales. But he said he left it there when his legislative career ended in January 2024. The manager of St. John Properties, which handles the building where Schexnayder’s office was located, won’t discuss the matter. All of this has deeply frustrated the family of Walter Stebbins, who donated the red cypress board to the Capitol in the 1950s and died in 1961. “It’s a piece of history,” said Julius Mullins, a retired doctor in Baton Rouge who is one of Stebbins’ grandchildren. “It was a museum
Business ......................1E Deaths .........................3B Nation-World................2A Classified ..................... 1F Living............................1D Opinion ........................6B Commentary ................7B Metro ...........................1B Sports ..........................1C
ä See PLANK, page 10A
13TH yEAR, NO. 33