Southwest Louisiana still picking up the pieces after back-to-back hurricanes

_{By Daniella Silva
Nov. 22, 2020}

LAKE CHARLES, La. — Clair Hebert Marceaux, her husband and their dog, Sugar,  drove up a water-filled road in the days after powerful Category 4 Hurricane Laura pummeled southwestern Louisiana to  their home  of nine years.

Sugar, a Labrador retriever and boxer mix, was making a singing sound after finally coming home to Cameron Parish following a mandatory evacuation because of the life-threatening storm, but when they pulled up, she suddenly stopped and no longer wanted to get out of the car. Hebert Marceaux screamed and cried.

Her 1,800-square-foot house, once the color of sandstone with brick-red shutters, was gone except for a slab. Not even the frame remained. Three alligators swam in the water that completely filled her yard. 

“I was sad and I was heartbroken and angry that so many people are in the same circumstance and I can't do anything to help them,” Hebert Marceaux, 43, the port director of Cameron Parish, said from atop the slab of her home in late October, where storm surge water behind the property could still be seen, two months after the  hurricane leveled her home.

“I don't want anybody to feel sorry for me, but it’s really rough being on your hands and knees in boots trying to find something that looks like your life,” she said.

Scattered around the road are pieces of the life Hebert Marceaux once had: a washer and a dryer, a red sweatshirt belonging to her son, a refrigerator door. 

“I mean that's my Crock-Pot right there, that's so messed up,” she said, her voice breaking as she gestured around the debris surrounding the remains of her home. “A lot of people don't know what to do next. I just want to come home.”

The deadly and destructive hurricanes Laura and Delta dealt a double blow to Louisiana just six weeks apart, both making landfall in coastal Cameron Parish near the Texas border.  Laura made landfall in late August, leaving a path of destruction along its route from the coast to Lake Charles, a working-class city in Calcasieu Parish of around 80,000 people. Delta followed in October, striking just 15 miles from where Laura first hit. 

Laura, which struck land as a colossal Category 4 storm, is now the most powerful storm on record to make landfall in Louisiana.

Parts of southwestern Louisiana, devastated by the two hurricanes could take a year or much longer to return to normal in the face of a critical housing shortage, economic crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, local officials and community advocates said.  

People are struggling to find contractors because of the massive extent of the need and the damage on top of what had already been a slowdown in economic activity because of the pandemic. Meanwhile, insurance checks have been slow to materialize and thousands of houses and apartment units have been taken off the market.

“Almost every dwelling, every business, every building has some damage, either moderate to severe,” Dick Gremillion, the director of nearby Calcasieu Parish’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, said. “In some cases complete structural failure.” 

The storms have left thousands displaced, businesses shuttered and a community traumatized. 

“The destruction is so utterly complete”

Gremillion said most apartment complexes in the parish have  canceled leases to get the residents out, so repairs can be done.

“We literally have probably a couple of thousand people who were living in apartments that no longer have a place to live,” he said.

“If you were to fly over the parish right now, you’d see probably 80 percent of private homes have blue roofs on them,” he added. 

The real estate analytics firm CoreLogic estimated the damage to residential and commercial buildings from Laura alone at $8 billion to $12 billion.  

“The destruction is so utterly complete,” Hebert Marceaux said. “Lives are so heavily impacted that it's difficult for them to complete minor tasks each day. The devastation continues to cause trauma for everyone here.”

One late October morning at the United Way of Southwest Louisiana hurricane relief center in the city of Lake Charles,  a continuous stream of cars rolled up to a large white tent where volunteers offered  a free meal of chili dogs, and supplies, including bottled water, an assortment of canned food, diapers, baby formula and even children’s books donated from around the world. 

The nonprofit has been serving upward of 2,000 meals in the months following the storms, its president and CEO, Denise Durel, said, and many more come just for the relief supplies.

Among those helping with the aid distribution that day was Melissa Butter, 43, who was living in a camper in her driveway with her husband, their 14-year-old son and their poodle, Charli, because their home was no longer habitable. 

Their roof sustained extensive damage during Laura, causing significant flooding in nearly every room in the home. The entire structure had to be gutted. While a replacement roof was installed in time for Delta, the inside of the home was still down to its skeletal wood framing two months after Laura, allowing visitors a clear view through the home from one end to the other, except for some cabinets, a sink and a stove. 

“It's difficult having to serve the community, which is something I love to do, but at the same time knowing that we're in the same predicament as a lot of these people,” said Butter, a resource development manager who has been with United Way almost six years. “We’re just trying to do what we can to provide some sense of normalcy for our family every day.”

That sense of normalcy involves her son, Connor, attending high school classes from home now that internet service has returned or practicing wrestling on a blue mat inside the shell of his home. 

Butter said the family has a contractor lined up to start repairs but  is waiting for insurance companies to release payments, a frustrating and slow process. Even in late October, there was a large pile outside the home of Sheetrock, insulation, couches and other furniture they lost in the gutting. 

“We have prepared ourselves to possibly be out of the house for a whole year,” she said.

Butter said knowing there are many families in situations much worse than her own motivates her to keep coming and helping at the relief center every day.

Back-to-back hurricanes only worsened Covid-19 crisis

John Cardone, the city administrator for Lake Charles, previously told NBC News that some 95 percent of the buildings in the city sustained some type of damage, ranging from being completely demolished to leaking roofs.

Between the two storms, nearly 2,800 residential structures (which includes single-family dwellings, mobile homes and apartments) were destroyed, more than 7,120 sustained major damage, more than 17,300 received minor damage, and another 13,552 were affected in all of Calcasieu Parish, according to officials. 

“There's just so much of need in this area we don’t want people to forget that,” Butter said. “A lot of families don’t have insurance and need help rebuilding and getting their homes. We just want people to know it's a lot worse than what they realize. It’s the whole area that’s still trying to recover.”

Durel said prior to the economic devastation the coronavirus pandemic and the hurricanes brought to the area, “we actually had 46 percent of the people here in southwest Louisiana who were struggling to make ends meet.”

“Then we went into Covid and now we’ve had the double whammy of the hurricanes, so the people who were struggling here, it’s even that much more massive and greater for them,” she said. “It’s just so much worse because they were already starting off the hurricane season in a bad place.”

She said government assistance in the form of housing options is desperately needed quickly to help people get back on their feet.

“That really is the only way we're going to be able to do it. We’re hearing that it's coming, but it's not here yet. It needs to be sooner than later,” she said. 

A Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesperson said in a statement that as of Nov. 8,  it had distributed more than $189 million to assist households  affected by Laura, which included nearly $130 million in housing assistance. For  Delta, FEMA has distributed more than $8.5 million ($7.1 million of which is housing assistance) under the same program, the spokesperson said.

In terms of direct housing aid after Laura, FEMA said its direct housing team was “continuing to review available commercial park sites for placement of housing units, as well as placement on private property.” 

“Currently, nearly 2,000 households have been approved for housing, and FEMA continues to reach out to additional eligible households. FEMA has initiated the mission already and is steadily ramping up the program and over 100 applicants have already been licensed into the units,” the agency said. “That number will continue to increase as more housing units are installed and inspected.”

“Where are you going to go if you don’t have no money?” 

A drive around Lake Charles quickly reveals the massive scope of devastation left to be tackled.

Blue tarps can be seen on houses in many residential neighborhoods, with some sidewalks still lined with massive debris piles spanning 10 to 15 feet in the air or higher and stuffed with downed trees and the remnants of partially or fully collapsed homes.. 

In the downtown area, many of the windows of the 22-story Capital One Tower building are boarded up after Laura shattered the blue glass on nearly every level of the building. The roof of Gigi’s, a local fitness center, collapsed, causing the business to cave in on itself in a heap still visible through its front door. Boarded-up businesses line the downtown, while others have managed to reopen. 

The massive debris piles are a constant reminder of the destruction wrought by the storms despite the city of Lake Charles already having cleaned up around 3 million cubic yards of debris since Laura, according to officials. By comparison, the 11-month  cleanup process after Hurricane Rita in 2005, the last time the area was hit by a hurricane with such intensity as Laura, was 1.4 million cubic yards.

“You ride around and I get depressed every time I see it,” JV Rachal, 68, a military veteran and a former teacher, said. “You still have debris all over north Lake Charles.”

Laura damaged his roof and destroyed his shed and driveway, while Delta brought flooding to his home. Having nowhere to evacuate to, he and his 5-year-old terrier, Luke, slept on and off in his car while his home had no electricity after the storms. 

Because there is so much need in the area, Rachal said he is having trouble finding a contractor to repair his home.

“Everyone’s telling me a month and a half to two months before they can even think about coming to look at anything,” he said.

Meanwhile, he said, he is still waiting for a check from his insurance company, which was sent to the wrong bank.

He said he knows people who are living in homes that are unlivable because they have nowhere to go and can’t afford to make repairs or haven’t been able to get a contractor yet.

“Everybody that I know can’t afford not to live in their house. Where are you going to go if you don’t have no money?” he said.

Gremillion said housing remained the most critical issue, with people who were renting homes or apartments that got damaged being suddenly displaced en masse. 

“You can hardly drive by any apartment complex without seeing them being empty,” he said.

At its peak in mid-September, 18,213 evacuees from Laura were in shelters in Louisiana and Texas, according to  the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services. As of Wednesday, 2,654 Louisianans were still being sheltered in hotels around the state. The Alexandria MegaShelter closed Nov. 6 after 76 days as a reception center and temporary emergency shelter.

A house for Christmas

On a Wednesday in late October, Michael Boyer and local restaurateurs gave out free meals of pasta, pulled pork sandwiches, McDonald’s Happy Meals and hand sanitizer as a steady stream of cars pulled up to the damaged remains of Buffi’s Peaux Boys.

Paige Vidrine, the restaurant's owner, said the building’s entire roof was damaged and gone after Laura and tarps put in its place were completely washed away by Delta. 

Despite the setbacks, she has been giving back to the community by giving out free meals with Boyer. 

“When you offer a plate of food to somebody, that’s love. That's how you show your community love,” she said. 

Boyer helped lead a team of community volunteers doing free food distribution at up to four sites, feeding thousands of people, in the aftermath of Hurricane Laura. At the original location in the parking lot of Nina-P's Cafe, they served food for about 45 days straight. Now, he helps set up smaller events like the one outside Buffi’s. 

Back in Cameron Parish, Marceaux drove around the devastation, which is even more complete than in Lake Charles. Entire homes and businesses were swept away, others were battered so badly on elevated pilings remain, like stilts holding up a phantom home. 

What was once a post office is now nearly two stories high of mangled debris, with piles of envelopes and signs of what it once was scattered among it. A pile of at least two dozen mattresses sits near a roadside in front of the destroyed motel they used to belong to. 

More than 300 caskets buried in the area have been disinterred and there is a search underway  using helicopters and airboats. 

“People around the country, I don’t think, know how traumatic that is,” she said.

Marceaux  has been living more than two hours away, coming back and forth to help her community while trying to find a sense of normalcy for her family amid all of the chaos.

“I asked my 15-year-old what do you want for Christmas this year and she goes, ‘a house,’” she said. “That’s it. Just a house.”