After 2 Hurricanes, A "Shredded" Lake Charles Stumbles On; Charitable & Gov Response Lagging Badly
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Hurricane Laura made landfall on Aug. 27 in Cameron Parish, south of Lake Charles, as a Category 4 storm with 150-mile-per-hour winds. More than two dozen people died in its aftermath. Trees were shredded and houses cracked open like eggs. Entire blocks of homes sustained so much damage they will almost certainly have to be razed. Then, this month, Hurricane Delta hit the coast not even 20 miles from where Laura made landfall, unleashing floods that besieged neighborhoods and heavy rainfall that swamped homes with already damaged roofs. It was virtually impossible to discern where the destruction from one storm ended and that of the other began.
Many residents’ homes were uninsured, and some said they had deductibles over $20,000, a sum so unaffordable their insurance policies were rendered useless. “I want people to know that we’re not OK, we’re not back to normal,” said Mr. Hunter, who has been mayor since 2017. “We’re going to do our part. We’re not just sitting on our butts with our hands out, saying, ‘Come do this for me.’ The extent of this catastrophe rises to a level where if it’s going to fall only on locals to help locals, we’re going to be in the thick of recovery much longer than we need to be.”
For many residents, life is now consumed by discomfort and distress. Days are spent negotiating bureaucracies for insurance help and government aid, cleaning ravaged homes and businesses and wading through the traffic jams of displaced residents. “This has been the eight weeks of hell,” Mr. Cormier said, pausing a conversation as he noticed a fan’s blades slowly turn, a long-awaited indication that his electricity had been restored. “Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!”
Making the situation even more stressful is the realization that it reflects a new reality created by climate change. Rita marked a dividing line for many on the coast between a time when a storm of such intensity seemed to hit once in a generation and a new era where such catastrophic hurricanes had an unsettling frequency. Now, some estimates place the damage caused by the recent hurricanes at $12 billion or more. Federal emergency officials have already approved more than $170 million in individual aid for Hurricane Laura’s victims, and members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation have pushed to increase federal support. The region’s economy has also been hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic and the collapse of the oil and gas industry, with refineries laying off dozens of workers in recent months.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/20/us/lake-charles-hurricane-laura-delta.html
