Evacuating Hurricane Laura

Wednesday, August 27, 2020 found my entire town staring into the face of Hurricane Laura. At this point, she was predicted to be a Category 4 when she came on shore. We already knew that she would plow clean through Cameron like a hot knife through butter. The prediction said we would be next, and dead on, too.

         A mandatory evacuation had been issued for Lake Charles, Louisiana where myself and my family lived. I gathered my eight and nine year old grandchildren and my eighty six year old mother and we headed out. 

         The nearest hotel we were able to book was in Jackson, Mississippi. We headed out in that direction at ten thirty in the morning. My son, Dillon, had decided to stay and ride out the storm, as had my daughter, Casey.

         That evening, as the storm neared landfall, my eyes were glued to the Weather Channel and my ear to the phone. My son was describing what he was hearing during the storm. It was scary for me, but it must have been terrifying for him, as he was all alone.

         I watched until after two thirty in the morning. Hurricane Laura made landfall in Cameron at one. I was mesmerized watching as my town was falling down around the reporters. I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The winds were between one hundred twenty and one hundred thirty miles per hour.

         Hurricane Laura destroyed my town thirty one years to the day after my father’s death and eleven months after my husband’s. As if this day wasn’t depressing enough, now my town was dead, as well. I couldn’t reach my son or daughter for most of the day, and I must admit that I feared the worst.

         We turned the television on as soon as we got up and began watching the destruction and devastation. It was unbelievable. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was left untouched. My heart was breaking. I was born there, I grew up there, I raised my kids there. Now there wasn’t there anymore. I had seen the devastation of Hurricane Rita in 2005, but this was just so much worse.

         Finally, we reached my son, and then my daughter. Thank God, they were unharmed. My mom’s home and mine sustained some flooding, but at the time that seemed minor because the water had receded and hadn’t appeared to cause much damage. 

         The true damage for my mom’s place was going to be the fact that the power was out and was expected to remain out for up to two months. This would cause a problem for my place, as well, but my place had larger problems. 

         I lived on the bottom floor of an apartment complex. The units on top were pretty much all destroyed. At the time, I wasn’t certain how much of a problem this would be to my unit.

         We returned the Saturday after the hurricane to try and evacuate my son and daughter. My daughter chose to remain, but eventually evacuated with her friend to Colorado, leaving her two kids with me. My son was more than happy to evacuate with us this time. My mother and I had both just done our grocery shopping and stocked up on meat, all of which we lost due to the lack of power.

         We returned to Mississippi, where we remained for several more days. Once our time there ran out, we headed out in search of help. There was supposed to be a place that was helping evacuees with hotel vouchers, but that turned out to be a rumor. We were looking at the possibility of having to return to Lake Charles, but then we found a hotel that had a room open. We headed out to Shreveport.

         Once we arrived, the hotel clerk was less than nice. He told us no pets and a one hundred dollar cash deposit. I left and by some chance of luck found another hotel with a room that accepted pets. We headed to Bossier City.

         At this hotel, we had better luck. The workers were friendly and sympathetic. We settled in to our room, which was considerably smaller than the one we had had in Mississippi. My mother was less than thrilled with our accommodations, but it was the best that I could do.

         Our time ran out there on the seventh day after the storm. We were low on money, luck, spirit, and hope. We loaded up ourselves and our pets and headed toward New Orleans, where we were told once more that there was help in getting a hotel room.

         On the way to New Orleans, when we were right outside of Alexandria, we received word that the help we sought was in Alexandria. We recalculated the navigator and headed that way, as it was much closer anyway.

         We finally caught a break. There was actually help there, and they put myself, my family and our pets up in a very nice hotel in New Orleans, where we were also provided with three meals a day. That night was the first time that I felt I could actually relax and maybe get some rest. 

         My relaxation was short lived. The very next day my daughter, who lived in the same apartment complex as me, called and said that they had contacted her and that they were going to have to demolish the entire complex. We were given two weeks to remove our belongings from our units.

         At this point, I have no place to store my belongings and no place to call home. I am, at this time, essentially homeless for the first time in my entire fifty years of life. I don’t know how I am going to get my things, I don’t know where I will store them, or where I can live.

         This is the most powerless that I have ever felt in my entire life. I have no idea this evening which way to turn. Two weeks seems so damn short. I am disabled, and will need at least two strong men to help me. I will have to find a storage building, which scares me because the one that I had in Lake Charles was burglarized and cleaned out a week before the hurricane. I will need to rent a U-Haul truck. To top it all off, I will need money for all of these things. I am on a pension and have no idea where the money is going to come from.

         This is a scary feeling. I am facing losing literally everything that my husband and I worked twenty years to accumulate. I am powerless. I am scared. I feel alone. I feel lonely. I feel lost. I feel like I want to break down and cry, but I can’t because I have my grandkids and they are looking to me to make everything alright. I have told them to trust me, and they do, but I don’t trust myself to find a way out of this nightmare.