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A view of Dulac, La.: A house and car are submerged in water from Hurricane Gustav.Courtesy Photo by Jamie Billiot

Gustav Aftermath: Some Houma Losses but Great Sigh of Relief

By Victor Merina

Taking a first look around their bayou communities in the wake of Hurricane Gustav, Brenda Dardar Robichaux and her party of Houma tribal members were both relieved and distressed at what Gustav had left behind.

The principal chief of the United Houma Nation and her entourage found their tribal center in Golden Meadows surprisingly intact and with little damage, but they discovered the Dulac Community Center surrounded by water and had to wade through knee-deep water to get to the building. They also found some houses “totally destroyed” while others were unscathed. And left unknown was the fate of some Houma neighborhoods.

“We held our breaths each time we came to the homes of tribal members,” Robichaux said. “And while we could take a deep sigh of relief in many cases, some communities have suffered greatly.”

In the town of Valentine in Lafourche Parish, Cody Danos was relieved to see the house she has lived in for 31 years still standing but saddened that her family had been victimized again after going through Hurricane Katrina three years ago.

“It was more damaged than it was from Katrina,” said Danos who said her roof would have to be repaired and a utility shed had vanished in the storm. “But at least our house is still there. “

Whitney Dardar, a commercial fisherman who lives in Golden Meadow, was happy to not only see that his house had survived but that his 40-foot fishing trawler was still afloat – right next to a neighbor’s boat that had its cabin crushed and hull damaged.

“I know everything is all right now. I’m going to sleep good tonight,” said Dardar who, like Danos, was part of the Robichaux entourage and who spoke by telephone from the chief’s home in Raceland, La.

Others, however, are not sleeping as easily, including Robichaux.

Initially blocked from visiting the stricken neighborhoods by police and National Guard troops, she was finally allowed to enter the devastated areas to survey Lafourche Parish and the more heavily hit Terrebonne Parish where many tribal members live.

“We saw some houses totally destroyed, and mobile homes were completely overturned,” Robichaux said of her journey through Dulac, Grand Bois, Golden Meadow and other communities.

“We had to navigate around downed power lines and trees that covered much of the highway and so much water covered the highway in places that we could not pass,” she added.

In Terrebonne Parish near Shrimper’s Row, a neighborhood heavily populated by Houmas, Robichaux said her group found much of the community inaccessible with power lines and broken transformers lying in the streets and battered telephone polls teetering over the road. Sheared branches and uprooted trees littered the highway. And while some elevated homes had escaped the rising waters, other houses were flooded.

Jamie Billiot, director of the Dulac Community Center whose parents live on Shrimper's Row, said she was apprehensive as she approached the neighborhood where she works and where she grew up.

“We were expecting total disaster and devastation,” she said, “so we were relieved at what we found.”

Although she had to wade through flooded waters and mud to get to her center and there was some wind and water damage at her family’s homes, Billiot said the news could have been much worse.

“It’s still heartbreaking," she said by telephone from St. Bernard's Parish where other Houma members were examining their houses that had withstood Gustav's wrath. "But at least there’s a place to start where we can rebuild our homes.”

[Editor's note: Read blogs by Jamie Billiot, Brenda Dardar Robichaux and other Houma tribal members.]

Victor Merina is reznet's senior correspondent and special projects editor. A former Los Angeles Times investigative reporter and finalist for the Pulitizer Prize, he also is a senior fellow at the USC Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism. Merina is a visiting faculty member at The Poynter Institute, where he leads seminars on cross-cultural reporting and writing about race.