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Jamie Billiot, director of the Dulac Community Center that serves many Houmas: "When they come back to their homes, they're going to need help."Courtesy photo

It's 'Like Déjà Vu:' Houmas Wait for Gustav

By Victor Merina

A birthday party is scaled back. Baby gifts and nursery furniture are stored. And families are divided over who will go and who will stay.

That is current life in the United Houma Nation where thousands of tribal members have joined the mass exodus along the Gulf Coast as Hurricane Gustav careens its way toward the Louisiana coastline that is home to 36,000 tribal members.

Hurricane trackers now place Gustav at a dangerous Category 3 level and said it could regain Category 4 strength later Sunday. The National Hurricane Center said Gustav is expected to reach land Monday, and hard-hit areas are expected to include LaFourche and Terrebonne parishes along with other bayou communities where many Houma tribal members live.

"For the tribe, it's probably the worst possible track for the storm to be on," said Michael Dardar, vice principal chief of the Houma Nation, in a telephone interview from Raceland, La. "If it stays on this track, there will be major flooding in every tribal community."

Dardar's old home in Plaquemines Parish was destroyed three years ago when Hurricane Katrina rampaged through the Gulf Coast. And just like they did when Katrina interrupted that celebration, his family had a birthday party planned for his 9-year-old grandson and 8-year-old granddaughter — marred once again by an approaching storm.

"It was like déjà vu. We were fixing to have a birthday party," said Dardar, when news came of mandatory evacuations and hurricane warnings. "We at least had some cake and a few friends so they would feel a sense of normalcy and not associate their birthdays with hurricanes."

Striving for any sense of normalcy was what Houma tribal members were doing this weekend even as officials in parish after parish announced evacuation plans and warned those who stayed that they were on their own.

Jamie Billiot, director of the Dulac Community Center that services many of the Houmas in the area, said her parents, her sister and her sisters' two children left Saturday morning and drove to a shelter in Natchez, Miss., that they knew about from the days recovering from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

But when they arrived at the shelter, Billiot said, the doors were closed and would not open until Sunday forcing her family to search for a place to stay — in a town where hotels and spare rooms were filled and other evacuees were continually arriving.

"I was frantic, searching on the Internet trying to find them another place to stay and we've been text-messaging back and forth," said the 27-year-old Billiot who knew that fuel would be costly for her parents as she worked into the night trying to find shelter for them.

As for Billiot herself, she decided to remain behind. Sleeping intermittently with a radio tuned to the weather channel, she heard worsening news of the hurricane and drove back and forth across the bayou. She was the last to lock the doors of the much-used community center and found herself among the last to pump gas at a service station before it suspended business. And Billiot listened to Houmas who were saddened and worried about leaving their homes.

Some Houmas, like Herman DeMoll, had just moved out of their FEMA trailers and into new homes in the last two months.

"I feel a responsibility for these people," Billiot said. "When they come back to their homes, they're going to need help. They're going to need someone to be there."

Billiot, along with others, will be staying at the Raceland home of Principal Chief Brenda Dardar Robichaux, whose family plans to ride out the hurricane with more than a dozen other Houmas.

Robichaux, in a telephone interview, said she is confident that her house, located on a rise and surrounded by a cluster of strong oak trees, would survive Gustav. She said a study by university researchers also shows that her home should be safe from any storm surge.

Just to be sure, however, her niece who is pregnant and wanted to join those staying for the hurricane, changed her mind and agreed with the others that she should leave.

"She packed up all her baby things and took it here," said Robichaux, who will be the baby's godmother. "But we wanted to be sure she would be at a place to get medical attention if the baby comes."

Michael Dardar and his wife, Thelma, are still struggling over the decision of whether to also stay at the Raceland home or evacuate — as his older daughter who lives farther north of Lake Pontchartrain is urging him to do. "It's more about making my family comfortable," he said. "My daughter really is worried about us."

Meanwhile, Robichaux and her husband, Mike, will keep their 11-year-old daughter, Felicite, at home. They have stored extra food, water and batteries for the group. Robichaux has been on the phone with other tribes and relief organizations trying to arrange help for tribal members. But Robichaux said all the dire warnings and tense waiting have taken their toll, especially for those who still remember Katrina and Rita.

"We laid down in bed last night and my daughter cried herself to sleep," said the chief of the Houma people. "She asked why all this was happening again."

On the telephone, a mother's voice grew softer.

"It was all I could do not to cry myself to sleep."

Merina reported from Los Angeles.

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.