Another 100 Year Event
Category 4 - #Laura
If you’ve read my blog posts, you’ll see a few familiar topics one of which is hurricanes. My earliest memory of an actual hurricane was when I was in middle school. I can’t remember the name, the date, or anything. I do remember the hotels in town being filled with people from Cameron parish. I also remember going outside during the eye thinking that I could check the mail (I didn’t get very far).
As an adult, I have a list of hurricanes that directly impacted the Gulf Coast. There were many more, these are just the ones I rememeber.
Katrina
Rita
Gustav
Ike
Harvey
Laura
Nearly 15 years to the date of Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Laura bull-dozed her way through Southwest Louisiana. She literally knocked everything around. The word “bomb” was used by those who got back into town first. The estimate was that nearly every structure in my hometown had damage.
The word “damage” doesn’t really bring things into perspective. We don’t live in a beachy community. The city that I live in is over 30 miles inland and has about 80,000 residents. When you include the surrounding areas (the cities of Sulphur, Westlake, Iowa - to name a few), there are nearly 175,000 residents. Cameron, Calcasieu, Beauregard parishes and, nearly 150 miles inland, Caddo and Bossier parishes lost power for days. Central and West Louisiana along with East Texas were all messed up.
Over a week has passed since landfall and, fingers crossed, the city will have electricity by September 20th (in about 15 days). However, more heavily damaged Cameron parish; low lying parishes all across Louisiana and Southeast Texas; and rural areas may go months before power is restored.
To say we’re in it for the long-haul is an understatement. It feels like we just started to make headway after Rita. It seemed like it took nearly five years to get back to normal after Rita who roared onshore as a high Category 2.
Though it is too early for a timeline, it looks like we’re looking at a couple of years before homes are repaired, road signs are reposted, and dislocated people are able to move back home.
Laura has turned our world upside down. But as we are regularly reminded, material things can be replaced but lives cannot. Thank God for the many blessings that technology has gifted to us including the ability to run from the wrath of mother nature and most recently #Laura.