LCV Winter 2012 - (Page 57)

Delcambre residents couldn’t wait for the floodwaters to recede before returning home to check out the damage inflicted by Hurricane Rita. the electrical panels and threatening to send the structure up in flames. had the fire burned the store down, insurance would have covered that. But the rising flood waters extinguished the flames. the owners were able to salvage the convenience store and reopen for business there three weeks later. Both supermarkets were ruined, though. that wasn’t the worst of it. “we were 10 family members just on the Champagne side that lost our homes,” Luquette said. “ten family members. Lester’s boy lost his. i lost mine. Lester’s sister lost hers. he had two nieces that lost theirs. this is all in the henry-delcambre-Erath area. my sister lost hers. two of her kids lost theirs. the biggest part about it — the majority of the family was all working at the store. all of a sudden, everybody’s unemployed.” as in nearby delcambre, about 90 percent of the buildings in Erath flooded. it took two to three days for the flooding from rita’s storm surge to recede. then began the long, slow process of recovery. it was difficult for individual homeowners, difficult for businesspeople, difficult for entire communities. these were areas not prone to frequent flooding. most houses were built on slabs or perched on small concrete pillars just a few feet off the ground. flood insurance was something that many people felt they did not need. and when rita proved otherwise, thousands of storm victims throughout the lower reaches of Vermilion Parish — as elsewhere in coastal Louisiana — were left to navigate a maddening, often booby-trapped bureaucratic maze before finding assistance from the federal Emergency management agency and the state’s road home program, which then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco established to funnel federal relief payments to homeowners. one such resident, interviewed 20 months after rita hit, couldn’t spit the words out fast enough as she tried to convey the frustration the recovery process had dealt her as she struggled to rebuild her flooded home and her life. financial assistance for her losses — house, cattle, property — was difficult to obtain, slow to arrive, insufficient to cover all the damage and then, adding insult to injury, deemed taxable income: “i don’t want to deal with anything. my taxes. the road home. the government? don’t talk to me about the government. i’ve had it. i’m tired Winter 2012-13 • Louisiana CuLturaL Vistas 57 

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LCV Winter 2012

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