For one family, Hurricane Laura the 3rd strike
Bradley HACKBERRY, LA. —
Beard callsHurricane Laura his third strike.
In2005, Rita pusheda foot of floodwaters into hiswhite, woodenhomein Hackberry, Louisiana, a tiny Cameron Parish community 15 miles from the Gulf of Mexico.
Next came Ike in 2008, which pushed water up to the floor of the long mobile home where his daughter and two granddaughters live on the same property.
Laura outstripped them both. It tore his house entirelyoffits foundationand dropped it a few feet away. The trailerwhere his daughter, Nicole, lives with her two daughterswas torn apart, the walls demolished to reveal a mix of clothes, belongings and wooden planks. About the only things still in their place were a canoe and a garbage can, tied to a steel grill buried in the ground.
A retired welder who worked at many of the refineries that dot the Louisiana coast, the 62-year-old Beard climbed through the debris, laboring with two artificial knees. After several minutes working to turn off the property’s
water lines, he sat on a fallen log and wiped the sweat from his brow.
“I got no other place,” he said. “This is all I got.”
Across Cameron Parish, the coastal parish where Hurricane Laura crashed ashore early Thursday, residents dug through what was left of their belongings, covered now-stripped roofs with tarps, and took stock of the damage.
The Category 4 storm packed 150-mph winds and a storm surge that Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said was as high as 15 feet. Louisiana
officials reported two additional deaths on Sunday, bringing the total number of deaths attributed to the storm in Louisiana and Texas to 18.
As of Sunday morning, roughly 460,000 customerswere still without power, according to the Edison Electric Institute, the association of investor-owned electric companies in the U.S.
Edwards called Laura the most powerful hurricane to strike Louisiana, a shocking assessment in a state where Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005. Out in western Louisiana it is the storm that came ashore a month after Katrina — Hurricane Rita — thatevokes strongmemories.
The damage wrought by Laura reminded many residents of Rita, which made landfall in the parish and wiped out many communities entirely, leading to one of the largest evacuations in American history.
Nicole Beard had her second daughter by cesarean section two weeks before Rita hit.
“I evacuated for Ritawith a newborn baby and stitches in my stomach,” she said.
Many people never returned to Cameron Parish, whose population fell 30% in the 2010 census, the first taken after the storm. TheBeards’ next-door neighbors left for good. But the Beards stayed.
The Beards said they weren’t sure yet how they would rebuild. BradleyBeard lives on Social Security, and Nicole Beardworks at a local alligator farm that ships hides internationally.
Nicole’s daughters insist that they stay in Cameron Parish. But she said: “I don’t know how many times you can restart from scratch.”