Allison Smith didn’t think about where she was going next. She had kept the boxes from moving into her two-bedroom apartment in the Chateau Creole complex a year ago and was planning to fill them with her clothes and other belongings, putting them in a U-Haul along with her bed and sofa and took it to the nearest storage room she found – two hours away. Then she would think about where to live.
“I haven’t thought that far,” said Smith as she and her boyfriend packed.
Residents of the residential complex loaded moving trucks, packed up belongings, and pondered what to do next after Hurricane Ida made the devastating winds and lashing rains uninhabitable. For many, there weren’t many good options.
Ida swept ashore on August 29th and Houma, a town of about 33,000 people, was the first major population center on its way. Electricity is not expected to return to the community until September 29th, and only for households and businesses that are structurally sound enough to take over the electricity supply. Many are not.
In the residential complex, the multi-storey car park was littered with clapboards and tufts of pink insulation material stuck to the outside walls. Some of the buildings had lost large parts of the sidings. In others, the roofing had been torn off and the rain soaked the pink insulation that fell into the apartments below.
When the storm broke, Smith was in a bedroom in her apartment – K26 – filming the raging storm outside as her ceiling collapsed over her. The bedroom is now carpeted with wet insulation above which you can see the frame of the building and the blue sky. She spent a hot night in her other bedroom fighting off mosquitos. Now she worries that another storm will come and destroy her belongings.
She filed an application with the Federal Emergency Management Agency; You gave her enough money to pay for a hotel for a week – “This is a start” – and then she will consider her next steps.
“I’m mentally drained, just exhausted,” she said.
At apartment M22, Jordan Howard and his friend had just returned home after being evacuated to Texas. They had heard of the damage to the complex and that they had to move out about other tenants on Facebook, but discovered that their apartment had escaped unscathed.
After an initial tour, her plan was to come back in a moving truck, pack, and start over. Before the storm, Howard was working as a receptionist at a hotel but said it was now closed. You think about what to do next – stay in Houma, where Howard has family, or start somewhere else – somewhere with electricity. It was a decision that he thought would make a lot of people too, considering how bad the damage was in Houma.
“So many people are going to have to leave and I don’t think many of them will be going back,” he said.
When Hurricane Ida swept over Houma, Jason Cole was at his first floor apartment – J17 – looking at the damage that was going on outside. After the storm, he and his son and several other relatives drove to Morgan City, about 35 miles away, and rented a hotel room. But they had to leave when the hotel gave the room to the workers who came to restore electricity. On the way back, his car broke down and he had it towed back to the apartment complex where a friend was doing repairs.
He and his son currently lived across the street with their godchild, but storm damage could force them to move out too. Cole was also unemployed after the hurricane destroyed the shrimp business where he used to be a driver.
He had saved a few items of clothing from his apartment, and like many in the Houma residential complex, he was trying to figure out what to do. He had heard from other residents that they had to leave by Tuesday, and he knows how bad the damage is in the whole city. If hotels nearby had rooms, he said, they wouldn’t offer weekly rates, so he was always worried about finding a room just to move out the next day.
“It’s just tough,” he said. “It’s tough for many.”
Hurricane Ida toppled trees and power lines and flooded homes in Louisiana before moving inland. Eric Alvarez reports from Houma and speaks to residents who are doing their best to rebuild.
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