Classie Ballou lives on the fifth floor of Chateau du Lac, an eight-story nursing home in Lake Charles, Louisiana. “I made it through Rita,” he said from a bench in downtown downtown as he reflected on the rage of Hurricane Laura that was just roaring through his hometown. “Honestly, I thought it would not be that bad.”
He shook his head. “If I did, I would leave.”
At 2 a.m., he woke up to feel the building – which provides a home for disabled residents – swinging back and forth when the Category 4 storm hit. His neighbors on the eighth floor felt the roof around about the same time. Soon his room was full of water from the rain that ran through the building.
Shalonda Brouchet, who also lives in the building, did not trust her car to get to Houston, so she spent the night as well. Windows started blowing out, and a set of dumpsters started crashing in the parking lot. “The wind, he just came through.”
In the morning, Ballou and Brouchet walked the streets of the inner city to assess the damage, and then gathered in a covered area under the building with neighbors.
“There’s devastation everywhere,” Ballou said, pointing to the collapsed roof of a home goods store across the street. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen, and I remember Audrey,” a storm that killed 416 people in the same part of Louisiana in 1957.
Matthew Dubone, another resident, said she did not expect to hear from her manager about the habitability of her apartments until Monday. “This building is out of commission,” Brouchet said. There is no electricity and no water, although the rooms are wet.
Now, Dubone said, they are investigating the wreck that was Lake Charles and are waiting for help to arrive.
The cars in the parking lot of her building were mostly destroyed, smashed by pieces of the falling roof, and the Texas-bound interstate – where most residents say they would go – was blocked. They piled frozen chicken thighs and peanut chops on a picnic table, along with a bottle of lighter liquid and bag of charcoal briquettes, and got them ready to cook the meat before it rotted.
But from early afternoon on Thursday, no one had told them when or where helpers could distribute food in the coming days. On the street outside, a steady stream of trucks passed by, which they said was aimed at removing downed trees.
“Everyone who lives here is disabled. Many of them left or were evacuated and we were the ones who could not, ‘said another resident, Kelvin Lamplin.
Louisiana is still under constraints designed to handle the coronavirus pandemic – like a mask mandate – but in Lake Charles, masks were nowhere to be seen among residents, rescue workers and even the soldiers on the busy convoys of the National Guard. t walked through the city. Near the city, a chlorine plant erupted with thick, glowing smoke after being damaged by the storm. Authorities ordered people around the plant to stay in their homes with windows and doors closed.
Laura has gone north of the state like a tropical storm after hitting the Louisiana coast with wind gusts up to 150mph strong. Officials warned of “catastrophic conditions” and more than 600,000 people fled their path.
But Chrystal and Ben Johnson did not. They plan the storm with their family in the historic office building they have downtown. They live 30 miles north of Lake Charles in Ragley, Louisiana, but thought the building was safer. “This place has 2ft thick walls, and a pump in the basement,” Ben said. “Houses are roaring,” Chrystal said, but this building, which was once a post office and courthouse, remained quiet.
Now, weeks in anticipation without power, they plan to drive back north and collect their possessions, and then leave the state. The family receives a steady stream of updates on nearby relief services. Another family member, behind them, said the National Guard had begun protecting the local CVS store, and had heard that the Cajun Navy, famous for its civilian rescue operation during Katrina, was still looking for a base on to set.
For one of the few tall buildings in downtown Lake Charles, a volunteer rescue worker who only identified himself as James described spending the night in a stuffed elevator. He said he had been in at least 20 storms, and came to Lake Charles on Wednesday to prepare them for the aftermath. A friend let him stay in the tower, home to a Capitol One office, but in the middle of the night he became antsy about the storm surge, and decided to take a service elevator to the 16th floor.
Halfway through, he heard a voice through the speaker saying “Lift out of service,” and then he sat down. He had brought meteorological equipment, and saw the pressure drop when the eye of the hurricane passed by. ‘The barometer dropped an inch. I’ve been through a lot of storms, and I’ve never seen that before. ”
When the eyewall whipped the city, “gave something, and shattered the whole building.”
James was sure the others who had taken cover in the tower were gone. But in the morning he slammed the door open and then used a piece of metal to scrape his way through the sheetrock’s elevator rock. From there, he had enough service to call for help, and rescue workers rushed the rest of the way through.
A few blocks from downtown, 18-year-olds Draven Smith and Aidan Abshire roamed through cluttered streets in a rattling pick-up, collecting fallen traffic signs.
The couple had been waiting for the storm in their home just outside Lake Charles, after realizing that all gas stations were closed, and they did not have enough gas to evacuate. Like others, the wind, and the shaking, the rustling, is what remained with them. “Surprisingly,” said Abshire, “it is our only house that is good. Roofs are torn down, fences are all down, windows broken. ”
When an army corps truck ran over, they turned the conversation into the rumors of looting they had heard, even though they themselves had not seen anyone.
“A hurricane, when it passes, feels like a great warning, from God,” says Abshire, “a great pressure that things must change. The plunder, the riots. The way people treat our earth.”
