LCV Winter 2012 - (Page 55)

“what?” a wide-awake but surprised Champagne replied. “it’s still high and dry here in Erath.” Luquette dressed hurriedly, drove over to Erath to pick up Champagne and then sped across to delcambre, all in a span of 20 minutes. highway 14 sits higher than the land along either side of it, so it was still passable as floodwater from rita’s storm surge began sweeping across the landscape. he stopped his vehicle in front of the delcambre supermarket, and they got out for a closer look. what they saw was shocking. “we already had two foot of water inside the delcambre store. the water was just rushing in,” Luquette recalled later. “there was nothing you could do. my heart sank.” once the storm surge riding rita’s leading edge had reached Vermilion Bay, it pushed up Bayou Carlin and spilled over into downtown delcambre from the bayouside docks which for decades had served the town’s fleet of shrimping trawlers. for anyone who had not evacuated, there was nothing to do about the rising water except try to get away from it. rita was on its way to flooding 90 percent of the town. their convenience store, several blocks farther away from the bayou, was still dry for the moment. within a few hours, though, the flooding reached that area, and there was no keeping the water out of that building, either. Luquette and Champagne returned to their flagship store on the street named for the “father of Erath,” dr. Joseph Kibbe, a graduate of tulane university in new orleans who established a medical practice, a pharmacy and a post office in the town once the southern Pacific railroad came through in 1893. dejected, they resigned themselves to the wrath that mother nature seemed determine to unleash on southern Vermilion Parish that day. it wouldn’t be the first time. Erath had endured significant flooding before, most notably in 1984, when a storm inundated half the town; the railroad tracks running east-to-west through Erath were sufficiently elevated to serve as a levee, keeping floodwaters out of the southern part of the town where most of the businesses, the high school and the Catholic church are located. Erath had been battered by hurricanes before, too — audrey in 1957, andrew in 1992 and, unforgettably, hilda in 1964. not otherwise remembered as one of the major hurricanes to strike Louisiana in modern times, hilda killed eight people in Erath, in one tragic moment. on the afternoon of oct. 3, 1964, just hours before hurricane hilda made landfall at marsh island, on the far side of Vermilion Bay, several volunteers had gathered in the Civil defense office at City hall to monitor citizens’ band and ham radio transmissions. outside, the town’s water tower was buffeted by increasingly harsh winds as the eye of the storm took dead aim on Vermilion Parish. in one fateful instant, either from a hurricane-force wind burst or a tornado spawned by the storm — no one knows for sure — the legs of the water tower buckled, and the 10,000-gallon water tank crashed onto City hall, crushing the red brick building. five men standing around the front door of the building were pushed away to relative safety by the wall of water from the ruptured tank. seventeen-year-old Civil defense volunteer martial Broussard survived the impact but was trapped by a metal beam and other debris for almost an hour until he could be rescued. Eight others died in the wreckage of the Civil defense office: scotty Bernard, 19, a student at the university of southwestern Louisiana; otto “Cowboy” Bourque, 53, a city policeman; brothers duffy Broussard, 28, an appliance store worker, and Vernice Broussard, 20, a hardware store employee who had been Bernard’s classmate in the Erath high school class of 1963; Camile Brown, 50, a former sheriff’s deputy and City Council member; felix dubois, 53, a farmer; Clifton J. dugas, 33, a construction worker; and Eutis “noo noo” menard, 53, the janitor at Erath high school. with the community in shock from the tragedy, a single Champagne’s Supermarket has been a focal point of everyday life in Erath since 1968. General manager Ricky Luquette has worked at the store since he was 12 years old. Winter 2012-13 • Louisiana CuLturaL Vistas 55 PHOTOS BY RON THIBODEAUX 

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