Despite Mud and Mold, Home Beckons for Residents of Erath
20 October 2005
They have weathered hurricanes before, and they will again. Though Hurricane Rita caused more damage than others, residents of Erath, Louisiana, are determined to rebuild their community.
For many folks in Erath, a small town off Route 14 in Louisiana’s Vermilion Parish, there is no place like home, even if mold and mud coat their floors, walls, and furnishings. Hurricane Rita left plenty of that in its wake—some of it potentially toxic.
But that didn’t stop people from returning as soon as they could after the storm and declaring their determination to stay no matter what Mother Nature brings. For some in Louisiana’s southern parishes, mud is a fact of life.
“People in this area are used to this kind of stuff,” said Martial Broussard, the only one of nine people to survive when Hurricane Hilda toppled a water tower onto the town hall in Erath where they were working in 1964. “They’re used to the mud, the slime, the oil. People here were brought up in the marsh. This is not the first time they’ve had to go home and strip their homes.”
Knowing that home would be tugging hard on the hearts of people in this rural parish of bayous and farm fields, the Southern Mutual Help Association, one of Oxfam America’s local partner organizations, has been raising awareness about the public health issues associated with home cleanups. It chose Erath as the site of the first distribution of its trial re-entry kits designed to outfit people with the basic equipment they would need to clean up their houses safely. (See “A Louisiana Community Finds Help Inside a Box.”)
The association is also working to build a $30 million rural recovery fund to help build Louisiana back better than it was before. But for plenty of people that road to recovery is going to be long and hard—and slopping through mud is just the beginning. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita have left them reeling.
What particularly worries Lorna Bourg about the western rural parishes is the age of the people who live there.
“It’s an older population,” said Bourg, executive director of the Southern Mutual Help Association. “I saw a lot of older people cleaning up their own places, and that has me very concerned.”
No Floods—Until Now
Sitting alone in his garage, Roland Suire listlessly spooned a cup of canned oranges into his mouth. Along the edge of the road in front of him sat almost the entire contents of his house—clothing, furniture, pictures—soggy and ruined.
“I have insurance, but no flood,” he said, choking back a sob. “I’ve been living here 40 some odd years and it never flooded. I’m 71 years old. I can’t start rebuilding.”
Suire built the house with his own hands and the help of his sons. He raised four kids there—he pointed proudly to their names etched in the concrete foundation—and spent many hours in the small, efficient kitchen on two of his passions: baking bread and canning fruits. After Rita hit, Suire had no choice but to toss 40 years of memories and rip the house apart to try and salvage what he could before the mold got to it.
Was he worried about how the mold could affect his health during the cleanup?
“I am concerned, but what can I do?” Suire asked. “I have to live somewhere. I never thought I’d have faced everything I owned gone down the drain.”
‘It Looked Like a Lake’
Suire is by no means alone. John LeBlanc, an Erath councilman, estimated that only 50 of the 1,000 homes in town escaped the floodwaters.
“You could look out across here and it looked like a lake,” he said, standing on the steps of the town hall, built in the shape of a hurricane-proof cylinder after Hilda demolished the old one. “We were launching boats from the red light [in the center of town]. The elevation is 10 feet above sea level.”
A little further south, in the town of Henry, things were no better. Judy Haseman had five feet of water—and a layer of mud—in her house after Rita left. She spent the days after the storm ripping up the carpets, tearing down the walls, and using a squeegee and a hose to scrape out the mud.
“It seems to be only marsh mud,” said Haseman. “The smell is so bad you might think something’s in it, but I didn’t see a film.” Yet not all toxins are visible, so each day when she has finished her cleanup tasks, she peels her work clothes off and washes them—twice—in antibacterial soup.
“I’m basically using the same clothes every day,” she said. “I don’t have that much to begin with. We have scratches and stuff—but nothing’s infected.”
‘It Wasn’t Much . . . But It Was Our Home’
Rita also brought misery for some folks in Abbeville, a short distance north.
As the water inched higher in the trailer park where Ricky Montagne lived with his wife and two children, it sloshed into a sewage oxidation pond and spilled out again, filling his house with filth a foot deep.
“We was watching the news about New Orleans and we was praying for them,” said Montagne, 42 and disabled. “We never expected it to happen to us.” But when the wind ripped the roof off his uninsured trailer and the floodwaters destroyed all the family’s belongings, New Orleans’ nightmare became his own.
“Because of all the feces I wouldn’t bring my kids back there,” said Montagne sadly. “It wasn’t a new trailer, but I paid for it. It wasn’t much for a lot of people, but it was our home.”
Starting Over Without Insurance
Among the Delahoussaye clan, the calamity has meant a lot of juggling for a lot of people—even those not directly affected by the storm. Family members are moving out of their own home temporarily to make room for Dean and Russell Delahoussaye, whose Erath home is now gutted.
On a tour of their home, the couple, who have been married for nearly half a century, recounted the years of pinching and saving on slim salaries to raise three children, pay off the mortgage, and build an addition using found materials. Now, all that hard work lay in a heap at the end of their driveway—one of many piles of wreckage along their street. Though the Delahoussayes had homeowners insurance, they were not covered for flood damage.
“We just couldn’t afford it,” said Dean Delahoussaye. “We were paying almost $2,000 for the insurance and it would have been $800 more for flood—and it’s never flooded before.”
This time, 10 inches of water swamped their home. To keep the mold at bay, they have been tearing sheetrock off their walls and yanking up the flooring.
“My husband can’t do much because of a bypass. His heart is out of rhythm and he’s on Coumadin,” said Dean Delahoussaye. “Russell, all he does is fetch and carry. I pick up and pull and put in storage boxes things I can salvage.”
Stacked on a trailer in the driveway were a few saved goods, including a handmade rocking chair that belonged to Russell Delahoussaye’s grandmother—a symbol of the importance family has always played in the lives of the Delahoussayes. They themselves were caring for a granddaughter and a great grandson when Rita hit.
The storm may have flooded the Delahoussayes’ house, but like so many others in Erath, Rita hasn’t drowned their sense of home.
“At least we have the frame and walls of a house,” said Russell Delahoussaye.
“We’re going to get through this,” added his wife. “We’ll learn something from this. Life is never what you think it’s going to be.”
