Cameron Parish after Hurricane Rita

[Blue FEMA roof on ruined house near Cameron. That's a refrigerator in the tree, below.]

It is very intense visiting Louisiana these days. All people can talk about is "the storm."

Cameron Parish (in Louisiana, the counties are called parishes) is completely destroyed. The whole parish was underwater, I believe for weeks, like St Bernard Parish, just outside New Orleans. But Cameron was not slowly submerged, but violently attacked by a huge storm surge. There is not a single house left habitable.

I couldn't believe people would go back there. Unlike New Orleans, which lived under a vague threat but had all the same survived almost 300 years of hurricanes, Cameron is on the Gulf coast, surrounded by marsh, and has been completely obliterated twice in the past fifty years. But there were people living in trailers here and there and you could hear the chain saws and see the blue roofs that mean they are trying to rebuild.

"What choice do they have?" my aunt said.

[ Left, Holly Beach, Cameron Parish,
before and after]

Comments

[Karen]

Thank you for your posts and photos. Thank you for reminding everyone that entire communities are gone, most probably never to return. My family got out in time, only lost things. But so many people lost everything - it breaks my heart.

I started reading your sight because I'm studying French and love Paris, and I've discovered that you're so much more than that. Merci bien, cherie.

Laissez les bons temps roulez...

Karen