Home Under Siege

Transcript

On August 27th, 2020 Hurricane Laura made landfall in southwest Louisiana as a powerful Category 4 storm. It wrecked homes and buildings, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands and devastated the coastline. Six weeks later, Hurricane Delta slammed into the same area. Four months later, a winter ice storm struck, knocking out power and gas and once again forcing residents from their homes. In May 2021, disaster-weary residents suffered through yet another strong storm that included tornadoes and flooding.

Cameron Parish, Coastal Louisiana
11 months after Hurricane Laura

Clair Marceaux – Director, Cameron Parish Port

“My daughter’s name is Gabby. That’s what the G is for. This was on our fireplace. A lot of that stayed. This is my son’s. After the storm surge went down, there was water everywhere, as far as the eye could see, even covering the road.

“You know, I often imagine: well, what was it like? How did it happen? Was there a wall of water? Was it just tornadic activity?

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“Damn.

“I didn’t want to get upset.

“I can remember what it smelled like. And cooking breakfast and sitting on the porch in the morning, drinking coffee and watching the birds.”

“It’s just really hard to explain what it feels like to see it like this. My husband just kept stacking up cinderblocks because what else are you going to do? It’s not like you have anything to repair. It’s just like it was never there and that’s a mental struggle every day.

“I just keep telling myself that immense pain and loss, as long as there’s a purpose, is worth going through. We are at the tip of the spear in a lot of ways when it comes to coastal living and climate change and the impacts that subsidence, sea level rise has. But it’s not, we’re not the only ones. And I think that’s something that people who live in coastal areas of the world need to consider. That’s an issue that impacts way more than just the people who live here in Cameron Parish.”

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Lerlene Dyson Rodrigue - Commercial Fisherwoman

“This is horrible.

“Miss Betty.

“This is just one of many cemeteries that have been totally destroyed.

“The hurricane took most of the coffins out of here.

“O, Lord, this is horrible.”

“It’s my dad’s. I just pray to God they find him, because he is the father of 15. Something literally moved the top off, but as you can see, the frame.

“And it’s like these storms, they get worse and worse. I mean, for Rita my mom went missing twice. She went missing for Rita, then Ike, and then they finally found her, put her back in the ground, and here comes Laura and now is daddy.

“The love of water my dad had, I think that’s what drove me into the water, was being one of his girls and did what he did and just, and that was one of my phrases all the time, ‘I know my dad smiling down on me’.”

“A lot of the fleet got destroyed for the hurricane. I think we lost six boats. The tongue went right through here, I guess from the force of the water coming in. It went through the front of my trailer.

“In my family, we’ve commercial fished all our life. Commercial oyster, commercial shrimp. I was the only female in the fleet of 80 men. And every time I’d show up on the reef all I’d hear is, ‘that b***h is back. That b***h is back.’ And I looked at Wendy and I said, got the name for that boat. But that’s hers. It ain’t the way I left her but that’s her.

“After Hurricane Laura, we were in a motel in Abbeville for five and a half months and finally I looked at my husband and I’m like, ‘I can’t do this anymore’. So, we are living here because this one is not livable yet. When we got back, the middle section, from that door to the second window, the roof was gone. So, this is going to be home for a little while. But we’re home. That’s the point.”

“It seems that, from August the twenty seventh till we got back here in February, it’s all a blur. I know we were at a hotel for five months. I know all of that. It’s just I can’t tell you in between.

“And I’m going to show you how I left this place when we left for that storm. See, she was right behind me, my granddaughter was right where my shed is. And this was the flyover of Cameron right after Laura. I know. I cried. That is main town and I’m about right here somewhere.

“In my family everybody’s back except my daughter. She refuses to come back. She, her and the kids can’t, they can’t do that again. They refuse to do it again which, you know, if it’s not in your blood you can’t do it. But as far as me, there was no choice. I tried that urban jungle and it didn’t work for me.

“To look at this place now and to where it was and where it’s been and what we’ve had to deal with for the last 15-20 years, it’s just, some of it’s breathtaking because I don’t even know where I found the strength to do this all over again. And it’s just, sometimes I walk out that door and be so happy to be home and sometimes I walk out that door and it’s like, ‘what the hell was I thinking?’

“But what do you do when everything you know is here, but it’s all gone, you know?”

Clair Marceaux

“That Gulf of Mexico environment, with higher temperatures, creates a breeding ground for intense hurricanes. And we are seeing the population not return. Our population right now may be as low as, say, maybe 3500 people which is down from 10,000. That’s significant.

“So much of the damage hasn’t been repaired.

“It’s almost a year after Laura made landfall and I’m one of the 40 percent of the people who live here who have no electrical transmission lines.

“Our hospital is not functioning. We have no more pharmacies. We have no more grocery stores. We have no more… All of those things have been destroyed. Is it worth saving? Well, quite frankly this coast is a working coast. We drive an energy that drives the rest of our nation. From here, we provide more than a quarter of the energy to the rest of our country and we export the third largest amount of liquefied natural gas besides Qatar and Australia, just this one parish. That matters. That means something to the rest of the world, and other countries depend on the United States for that natural gas.

“So, if they stop asking for it then maybe we’ll stop producing it. But to say that my house got taken away by a hurricane that is caused by fossil fuel energy production and energy use, I don’t think it’s a fair behavior on the part of those who criticize energy consumption when they, too, are users. So, unless they’re completely off the grid, I don’t believe that energy production is any more to blame than energy consumption. I like being warm in the wintertime. I like being cool in the summertime. If there were a better way for our planet to allow people to do that, then I think that we would all be pursuing it. And so, if an energy transition is what can bring that about, I’m all for it.”

“One of the things I think that is saddest to me about all that’s happened is, you see all these trees on our right? These are oak trees and so many of these are dead. And they’re killed from the saltwater intrusion from the Gulf. When the oaks start to die, then we know that we can predict future land loss of those ridges that allow us to keep the cheniers [beach ridges] intact.”

“So, this is the port office. This is where I work. And you can see from this map that, of our roughly 1200 square miles [3100 km²], we are predominantly open water or marshland.

“Probably, the most incredible part of last year’s hurricane season to me was that Hurricane Laura made landfall about here, and Hurricane Delta made landfall about here, so about a 12 mile [19 km], stretch between the two landfalls.

“So, Cameron, Louisiana is right here, right on the Gulf Coast.

“That waterway, the Calcasieu Ship Channel, runs all the way up into Lake Charles. And the hurricane force winds for Hurricane Laura where, like I said, felt way into an area actually off of this map. So, there was significant damage throughout this entire area. We call this Imperial Calcasieu.

“We’re losing about an American football field size [half a hectare] of land every hour. And the more of that coastal protection that we lose with each storm that we experience here, increases the impact to the metropolitan areas further north of us, say 50 miles [80 km] inland, because the wetlands act as a wave impact absorber. The people who had lived their entire lifetimes in Lake Charles, they really had no idea how intense it could be.”

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City of Lake Charles, Calcasieu Parish
74 km inland from Cameron Parish

Deidra Jones – Lake Charles resident

“Joyce, how many people are not here? OK, we have got nothing but abandoned houses down here. About 30 families on this street, probably more than that, that are displaced.

“Some of them are living in hotel rooms.

“I talked to this lady last week that stayed in that house up there. She was crying. She said, ‘Miss Deidra, do you know when we’re coming back home?’ I said, ‘Baby, I don’t know’.

“I’ve been here before Housing Authority took over these houses. Thirty one years and I come back after a year and some from [for translation - after] a hurricane. Look at my house, Joyce. Look at all the commodes and stuff. That don’t make sense.”

Joyce Nash – Lake Charles resident

“And it’s almost a year.”

Deidra Jones

“Almost a year. That don’t make no sense. We still don’t have no answers.”

Joyce Nash

“A whole year and we haven’t got any houses fixed and we have no answers.”

Deidra Jones

“Look at my backyard. After 31 years! We’ve got a right to know when we’re going to return back home. We’ve got a right to know.

“To say we’ve been here all these years, been faithful tenants, been faithful payees to pay our rent. So, why? Why do we have to go through this here?

“And I am worried about the climate change because we don’t know what’s next for us. We don’t know if they’re going to come and tear the whole thing down, or sell them? We don’t know nothing.

“You know, when I came back it really devastated me to see my house in disorder. It was molded. It was full of water. It was stinking, you know. The windows were busted.

“I was one of the fortunate ones. I’m able to go and get me apartment. But I look at the people that are single, you know, that have children, that have nowhere to go.

“The city is lacking workers. So many people are displaced and some of them can find good jobs here but if they come back home, where they’re going to stay?”

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Tami Chrisope – Senior Director, United Way

“Eighty percent of Calcasieu Parish had a [temporary] blue roof after Laura and then after Delta, like 90 percent.

“So, this is another one of our low income housing places. And as you can see, this is a huge complex that’s completely empty. But this was a super busy area with lots of people living here. And it’s not like there’s another bunch of apartments somewhere where all these people went. So, that’s how I know there have to be a lot of workers missing from town. I don’t think they’re in town yet and I think that’s why all of these jobs are still open. My hope is that if there’s a place to live that they can afford that they will come back and take the job that that’s an incentive.”

Kathy Vidrine – Owner “Steamboat Bills”

“Hi, ladies. How many’s in your party?

“As soon as you know what you want, let me know. She’s going to get … You all together.”

Customer

“Yes ma’am.”

Kathy Vidrine

“The roof was off, so everything came down here.

“All of this is new. We took the awning down. That’s the only thing that we saved. All of this is new. All the upstairs has to be done. So, we’re waiting for the rest of the insurance to come in and then I’ll get everything fixed. If they pay me. If and when.”

Customer

“This one was closed after the storm. So, when I heard it was back open I said, ‘We have to go. We got to go’.”

Kathy Vidrine

“Thank you so much.”

Customer

“No place like home.”

Kathy Vidrine

“Thank you. Thank you.”

Kathy Vidrine

“When those doors opened for the first day, everybody that was in town, we were closed for eight months, oh no. And now they’re getting wind that, ‘Oh, Steamboats is open. Steamboats is open’. They’re coming and coming.

“I need about 30 more people. So, if anybody wants a job, if it’s senior citizen or 15, we hire them. Everybody’s working overtime and I need about 30 more people and they have not come back. There are so many of them that have moved away. No place to live. Unemployment. There’s so many destroyed buildings in this town and the ones that aren’t destroyed are condemned.”

Steamboat Bill’s waiter

“… And some medium shrimp.”

Customer

“Thank you so much.”

Kathy Vidrine

“All right.”

Customer

”Grandson, Kathy.”

Kathy Vidrine

“How are you doing?”

Customer

“This young boy’s with me today.”

Kathy Vidrine

“Good. You should be over here. How old is he?”

Customer

“Sixteen.”

Kathy Vidrine

“You want a job here?”

Customer’s grandson

“Oh, I don’t live here.”

Customer

“He lives in Tennessee.”

Kathy Vidrine

“Oh, he lives in T… what part?”

Customer

“Clarksville, near Nashville.”

Kathy Vidrine

“Clarksville.”

Kathy Vidrine

“How are you doing?”

Steamboat Bills worker

“I’m doing good. How are you doing, Miss Kathy?”

Kathy Vidrine

“Great. That’s not supposed to be under there.

“Capricia, she is the artist.

“All right, guys are you doing OK?”

Kathy Vidrine

“We’re in a disastrous situation, but you are not going to be able to talk to me about climate change because I don’t believe. No, we have storms, there’s been storms from the beginning of time and we just happen to be in three of the worst storms, you know. So, that’s how I feel.”

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Kyle Lacompte – Oil company operations supervisor

“One of the scenic views of Lake Charles.

“There’s another plant over there. I guess it’s common to our backdrop.

“I’m an operations supervisor at an oil company that kind of focuses on chemicals, whether it be rubber or pantyhose or your dish soap. So, it makes a variety of things.

“I feel like you’d have to be pretty willfully ignorant to say that nothing is changing about our climate. So, I definitely think fossil fuels has a part in climate change, but a significant portion of our community relies on the oil and gas industry for their job. So, it’s definitely, it’s very important for our area. Thousands of jobs.

“The talk about climate change, the talk about alternative fuels would directly impact this area without an alternative as far as like type of job. There’s a lot of instant defense because, you know, it’s tough to tell someone, like, well, you just learn a new skill or whatever and you can pivot to another, you know, it’s like, when you can’t like easily see what you can pivot to, you’re not going to just jump, “Oh, for sure. Let me take this leap of faith”. But, if my company came and started saying, ‘Hey, we’re going to make batteries’ or whatever, I’m all on board. My thing is, I need a job.”

Craig Colten – Professor Emeritus, Louisiana State University

“People in coastal Louisiana tend to live in these long narrow slivers of land along bayous and rivers that were formerly natural levees.

“What we are seeing with climate change is after each event, we see this in Lake Charles this past year, you have one calamity and people begin to rebuild, and then you have another calamity on top of that. They begin to rebuild again and you have another calamity. So, you have this cumulative effect and each time a storm hits, it drives the resilience of the population further down and they have farther to go to get out of the depressed state of the economy and their social well-being.

“And what we’re seeing here, playing out in coastal Louisiana writ large, is kind of a fracturing of the population. We’re seeing younger, middle class people moving away. Many, many of the people in their 20s and 30s and 40s are moving away and not coming back. Their parents, the elderly are staying and in many cases the very poor are staying. So, you have people on fixed income and the poor concentrating in these areas. And in some of these towns, the small towns in the coastal area, population loss can be most dramatic, because you lose your threshold population. They shut down your post office. You can’t support the grocery store. You can’t support the schools. And that puts a community into a position where there might be at a tipping point and everybody begins to head up the bayou, head inland to go to a community where they can send their kids to school without a forty five minute, hour long bus ride. But, I think these coastal cities will see pulses of outmigration, not complete collapses of cities. But each time there’s a big event, the population will decline a bit and there’ll be a surge out and they’ll become shrinking cities over the long term. And that’s what’s going to be the real telling factor and how well we respond to these multiple, overlapping events.”

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Polly Glover - Louisiana resident

“I brought the wrong paddle.

“Yeah, y’all need to come and eat.”

Clair Marceaux

“So, Polly, what you got in here?”

Polly Glover

“We’ve got Cameron’s finest shrimp.”

Clair Marceaux

“Yes. I haven’t seen shrimp like that in a long time. Wow, I’m sending this to my husband so that he can see how big they are.”

Polly Glover

“He should have come.”

Clair Marceaux

“We had a party. It was great. And every dish we had, except for the dessert, had Tabasco products in it.

“Did I text you those pictures of us at Josephine’s?”

Clair Marceaux

“I’m part of the generation here that keeps coming back. At some point I think people in that situation have to really evaluate, you know, what the purpose is. People who live in coastal areas of the world need to consider what’s the healthiest place for their kids to be. And, I never did really understand why outsiders want to know, why do you want to live here? Well, why did they want to live where they live? No one is immune to natural disaster. We just continue to face it. It’s not a situation where just because someone lives in somewhere in Europe or Asia or any other continent they’re going to escape it. I don’t think that’s a fair question. And we’re not, you know, not going to be climate refugees. I mean, I guess we already are in some ways. But I think it’s a question that everyone in the world needs to be asking, not just us.”