Coming Home

This is a long overdue update on the aftermath of Hurricane Rita, as I've spent the last few weeks trying to digest all the information, battle a nasty head cold which kept me down for several days - which I'm sure was the result of the emotional stress I was dealing with, and being inundated at work.

My parents and grandparents returned to Abbeville on Tuesday, September 27. My parents' house had had between two and a half to three feet of water in it. All the furniture, appliances, and electronic equipment were destroyed. The flood left behind a couple inches of marsh mud in the house and a couple feet of it all over the flood zone. I'm told the smell is unbearable. Luckily all the irreplaceable items were safe, either hung high enough on the wall or kept upstairs.

In Henry, the devastation was much more severe as the tidal surge was estimated to have been between ten to fifteen feet. My grandparents' house and most of its contents was heavily damaged as well as houses belonging to my great aunt and uncle and cousin Madeleine and her husband Jeff. After salvaging is completed, these houses will have to be brought down.






Jeff built his house himself over twenty-five years ago. Bart's house sustained major damage downstairs but the structure should survive, as well as his father Sammy's house, which took on about half a foot of water as his house is built ten feet up.

Our cousin Jimmy lives in the Delino House, my great-grandparents' old house, and he is trying to save it.



My parents have been racing to save their house. All the walls have to be taken out one foot above the water line and the insulation removed. A solution is then sprayed and has to dry for several weeks to make sure no mold is growing. The contractors completed the removal of the walls the other day. My parents are living in the travel trailer, which they had purchased only weeks before the storm. How's that for timing?

My grandparents are settled in the assisted living place in Abbeville. It's a nice facility and the staff takes good care of the residents. My grandmother is having trouble adjusting as she's used to living with family members around her and the church just being a stone's throw away. She was very happy when my mother found her rosary beads and cleaned them up for her.

Everyone is really pulling together down there. The cousins from Metairie, who had fled Katrina, then Rita, returned in their trailers to help out. They set up two Coleman stoves under Sammy's carport and have been cooking dinner for everybody. It's been the gathering spot every night. My mother's birthday was a couple weeks ago and they made a big pot of gumbo and had a cake for her. There is also a Red Cross truck around the corner at the school that hands out meals, water and ice.

Another challenge has been dealing with FEMA and the insurance adjusters.

My mother told me she and my step-father consider themselves lucky as it could've been a lot worse compared with the damage in Henry and points further south. It is estimated that 6,000 homes were damaged or destroyed by floodwaters in Vermilion Parish alone. The economic future for most of the people down there is bleak as the sugar cane crop, which was near harvest, was destroyed. Farmers were also hard hit as a result of the high death toll of cattle. The next big worry is what the salt water did to the crawfish ponds and what will become of that harvest come winter.

I'm glad everyone is safe but it has been an exhaustively on-going journey for everyone down there and I sometimes feel overwhelmed with sadness over what happened.

Disconnected

At last, a slow night at work!! I'm feeling much better than I was last week although I'm still plagued somewhat by a little congestion. It also seems I don't need Tylenol cold medicine anymore, which was making me jumpy at night (using the day formula) and woozy at all other times (using the night formula). Damn these head colds!

Things are chugging along at my parents' house. Phil had to go back to work in Leesville so my mother is by herself during the week, staying in the trailer at the house. I'm constantly worried about that, but she says she's armed and dangerous - she knows how to use the gun! And there are other neighbors at home staying in trailers and they all have each other's cell phone. The power is back on so my mother leaves the lights on upstairs to look as if someone is home. There hasn't been a problem with looters per se, but some of the furniture that's been put out on the street has been taken. Why, is beyond anyone's guess - all the furniture is contaminated. A theory is that people may be roaming about looking for damaged furniture to put in their homes and claim it's theirs for insurance or FEMA or something. Whatever, if I saw someone out there pilfering I'd shoot first and ask questions later - sounds like looting to me. BANG!!!!

All the carpeting has been ripped up. The next step is to tear open the walls one foot above the water line - so four feet up - so the insulation can be taken out. Once that gets saturated it doesn't dry, which leads to mold growth, which destroys the house. My mom's been having to clorox some areas anyway since there has been some growth as it was damp and in the 90's for several days until they could get back. She noted how hot the house was when they returned. So the house has to be partially gutted pretty much, which means the beautiful wainscoting that adorned the walls downstairs comes off. And my mom had just finished re-doing the bathrooms and worked her butt off painting. Phil is going to have to work for a few more years to balance out the loss and reconstruction. FEMA did send the $2,000 check but my parents will have to pay it back if the insurance company comes through. I say "if" because Louisiana is filing lawsuits with three different insurers, including my parents' carrier. They may have to go to court to collect. They're saying that the flood was due to a tidal surge and not rising water. Uh, excuse me, this was a STORM SURGE caused by a Cat. 3 hurricane that created rising sea levels, and the onshore winds pushed the surge six to seven miles inland. I'd consider that rising water, wouldn't you? Of course the companies are going to try and get out of it as this may render them insolvent. It's going to get ugly.

My grandparents house was pretty much destroyed. Mom, Larry and Lori have been trying to salvage some things like my grandmother's coin collection. My grandparents' house, TB and Lorena's house, and Madeleine and Jeff's house are going to have to be bulldozed, as there's just too much structural damage. Jeff built his house himself 25 years ago. Our cousin Jimmy who lives in my great-grandparents' old house is racing to try and save it. That house is a family treasure, my mother came home to that house after she was born and spent every visit to Henry in that house. Jimmy took beautiful care of it; I hope he saves it. Bart will have to reconstruct the downstairs but it looks like the house will survive. And his father Sammy had about a half-foot of water (considering Henry is 6 feet above sea level and his house is 11 and a half feet up - imagine how high that surge was) so his house is salvageable. They found a dead calf in the yard between the church and another cousin's house.

The pictures I've attached are from the Lafayette newspaper. The first is the entrance to the Henry School, which is across the street to the east of my grandparents. You can see the mud left behind on the walkway - that is what was left in all the houses. The second one is another house nearby. You can see it covered in marsh grass, which was also left behind in the houses in Henry. My aunt Lori took tons of pictures and will link us to them when she gets them up.














As for me, I've had a rough patch this past week dealing with all this. Aside from the depths of sadness that I feel, I'm frustrated that I don't have the financial and independent means to get down there and help out. I can't pay my bills if I don't work so I'm stuck here. It makes me feel like a failure on some level.

Another problem I'm having is dealing with a shockingly absolute silence from people I thought were my friends. There are certain individuals and even family members (from my father's side) who I have received no response or reply from. I just find it deeply disquieting and disturbing to say the least. Are friends really that busy with their lives that they can't click the fucking reply link on their email or pick up the phone? My mom was telling me about her longtime friends who have been calling her and crying on the phone over everything that's happened. I think it is something endemic of my generation - this sense of disconnect. The President certainly has it, not to mention most of our society. I don't know what to make of it or how to respond to it.

Rita...Our Worst Fears

The Second Surge



ALL FAMILY MEMBERS ARE ALIVE AND SAFE, everyone heeded the evacuation orders. My parents and grandparents are still in Alexandria.

But, we have a long road ahead.

Most of the homes were caught in the sudden floodwaters that engulfed Vermilion Parish early Saturday morning. My parents' house took on water as well as the homes belonging to my grandparents and cousins in Henry. Henry was virtually buried in up to 10 feet of water.




Rita took a sudden jog to the east before making landfall. Although it appeared that the Parish made it through the initial part of the storm without much damage, the lingering on-shore wind gusts pushed water from Vermilion Bay nearly 5 miles inland in a sudden and violent surge after daybreak. Some areas took on 5 feet of water within 20 minutes. The floodwaters stretched as far inland as Hwy. 14 in Erath.

It was an agonizing Saturday as I struggled to get information when MSNBC first broke the story that hundreds were awaiting rescue from Vermilion Parish floodwaters. CNN soon followed but details were not specific. The power was still out in Alexandria so my parents were not able to receive any local information. My mother's younger sister Lori in Austin, Texas began monitoring the website for KATC, a local TV station in Lafayette. She logged onto a forum for Vermilion Parish and eyewitness postings began appearing - the news was grim. Once it was confirmed that Erath and Delcambre, which are towns to the north of Henry and Rose Hill (the subdivision where my parents' house is), were under water, we had to assume the worst.

Our cousin Bart, the state trooper, was able to confirm that there was water at my parents and at Henry. He contacted my cousin Madeleine's husband Jeff and he relayed the information to other family members.



Anderson Cooper of CNN went live in Abbeville by Saturday evening and was able to gather statistics, along with Governor Blanco who arrived shortly thereafter.

Luckily this was a tidal surge and the water was receding well by Sunday afternoon. Bart was able to make a more thorough survey. At my parents' house, he thought that the water line appeared to be at the overhang of the roof on the front porch, which meant the entire downstairs might have been under water. We are hoping that the second floor survived, as that's where my mother put the photos and some family heirlooms. However, their next-door neighbor, Whitney Atchetee, returned yesterday morning. He contacted my mother and said he only appeared to have had 2 1/2 to maybe 3 feet of water at the most, but this being marsh water - there is mud everywhere. Both houses are at the same elevation so we're hoping this will be the case for my parents' house.

Henry did not fare so well. My grandparents' house was knocked off its support pillars. Bart's house had water nearly up to the second floor. His father Sammy's house is built up on a 10-foot platform, it appeared there was at least a couple inches of water that had made it in. Plus...there was a cow on the porch...10 feet up. Madeleine and Jeff, who had evacuated to Natchez, Mississippi, arrived in Maurice, north of Abbeville, yesterday. Jeff drove to Henry later in the day. Madeleine and Jeff's house was heavily damaged, the furniture is tossed all over and there is mud everywhere. The windows in their game room house were blasted out. Madeleine's parents' (my great uncle and aunt) house was virtually destroyed. A silver lining for Madeleine: Jeff found her two cats they had to leave behind, in the house alive! They were up on a shelf in the bedroom. Bart's dog also survived and was found on the trampoline upstairs in his house.

And the water is receding...

Sunday was a day of reckoning as I watched footage coming in all day long on the various news channels. At one point I saw a cemetery in Erath, where my great-grandparents are buried, under water. During the broadcast of "Larry King Live" I actually caught a glimpse of the street my parents live on - Broussel Drive - still in standing water. I couldn't see their house; the camera was panning across the street.

My folks are anxious to get home and may begin the journey later this week. The first priority is to get my grandparents situated. There is an assisted-living facility in Abbeville where my parents are looking to place them. Aunt Lori and her boyfriend Jeremy purchased a generator and rented a truck and will head from Austin, Texas, along with my Uncle Larry (my mother's brother) when my mother gives them the word. Mom and Phil will most likely stay in the travel trailer (using the generator) at the house to begin the clean up. At some point they'll go to my grandparents to see what they can salvage.

The important thing is everybody made it out alive and I'm grateful for that. Now I grieve over the loss of so many homes down there, nearly 2/3 of the Parish was flooded. And Cameron Parish to the west was practically wiped off the map. I also grieve over the loss of the irreplaceable sentimental items that belonged to my relatives and the sad task they are about to undertake. My grandmother is 86 years old and was born and raised in Henry. She met my grandfather, now 97 years old, in Port Arthur, Texas when she had moved there to attend beauty school. They raised their family in Port Arthur, another town hard hit by the wrath of Rita. My mother attended Thomas Jefferson High School, and one of her classmates was Janis Joplin. Their family spent every vacation and summer in Henry, Louisiana. My grandparents moved back to Henry in the 1960's where they've lived ever since. My grandmother's brother and his wife, Thomas Bradshaw, Jr. and Lorena Delino have lived in Henry their entire lives and in the same house for over 60 years. They are both 90 years old. The fact that they are now homeless is almost too much to bear.

I was a little melancholy a couple years ago when my parents decided to pull up stakes and leave my home state of California for Abbeville, Louisiana, my mother's birthplace and maternal ancestral home. I hadn't been to Louisiana since I was a teenager, when we embarked on a rather tumultuous and rickety motor-home trip in the summer of 1983. So when I first ventured out to visit my family in Louisiana last year, I immediately fell in love with the place. I had spent the last two years researching my ancestry and tracing my Cajun roots back to the 17th century, and the sense of history I felt there was overwhelming, not to mention the astounding beauty of the land.

Last night on CNN I watched a report by Anderson Cooper who had gone out on a boat with a rescue team on a mission to evacuate a family trapped by the floodwaters somewhere in Vermilion Parish. A lady named Diane Hebert, who is the same age as my mother, acknowledged her rescuers in a familiar Cajun patois, "We glad y'all takin' us out." She then perfectly summed up my own feelings about the Parish, "There is so much beauty in the land and the way we live."

Now I can't wait to get back there: to soak in the history, watch snow-white egrets soar across the prairie, listen to tales of the past from my grandmother and cousins, and eat boiled crawfish on the back patio of my parents' house.

To be continued....