A Hurricane's Legacy: "We'll Build Back Better"

The people who live in the spare clapboard houses beside Grand Bayou, La., don’t normally fret much about Gulf Coast storms. When weather reports turned frantic and the winds started to whip, the close-knit residents of this water-bound community simply boarded their shrimp boats and steered away from open water.

They know from experience that putting fingers of solid ground between themselves and the churning waves will keep their families safe, their boats unharmed, their livelihoods intact. This way, the fishermen of Grand Bayou can return home soon after the high water subsides, in plenty of time to drop their nets into the Gulf to collect the rich seafood harvests that often follow a hurricane.

Evacuating by boat has been the drill in this tiny Plaquemines Parish community for decades. But in recent years, environmental degradation has put Grand Bayou at Mother Nature’s mercy. Levees that hold the Mississippi River in its banks have also prevented the natural flooding that once deposited sediment to build up the land. Without that sediment, Plaquemines Parish is sinking and the brackish water of the bayou is lapping closer to the Grand Bayou community’s front doors.

Some of the 100 or so Grand Bayou residents worried that a quick getaway over water would be too risky, so when Hurricane Katrina barreled through the Gulf in late August, many of them abandoned their shrimp boats and joined the stop-and-go caravans that clogged the highways headed inland.

So she and the other holdouts loaded cases of bottled water and canned food onto four boats and motored into a narrow canal to wait out the storm. Sturdy oaks and high banks kept the boats safe until the high winds and rains passed.

The real trouble began the next day, when the family headed back home to survey the damage. Water covered what once was land, and entire houses were blown on their sides. Roofs were gone, walls were missing and the boats left behind by neighbors who had escaped to Texas, Alabama, Tennessee and Mississippi were broken and scattered.

“It will take a lot to make their community livable again,” Heifer International Louisiana Field Coordinator Emily King said in November, nearly three months after Katrina moved through. King was working with the Grand Bayou community before the hurricane to help the members develop minnow farms to raise and sell bait to sport fishermen. The project would bolster the
finances of the families who struggle to make ends meet on the sporadic income that goes along with fishing for a living. Now, the minnow project is on hold until members of the Grand Bayou community can come back home.

But Heifer International has stepped in to help with other things, including money for boat repairs. Since Katrina smashed into the Gulf Coast states, Heifer staff has been busy helping project participants at the 16 projects in Mississippi and Louisiana affected by the formidable storm. Roughly $1 million was raised to help those participants rebuild.

From the Coast to the Woods
People living along the coast suffered the heaviest damage, but Heifer project participants more than 100 miles inland were also sent reeling when Katrina pulled down trees, ripped fences and claimed livestock and feed. Hundreds of project participants from the Gulf Coast to the pine woods of central Mississippi look to Heifer for help. An informal survey Heifer sent to project participants in Mississippi and Louisiana indicates that nearly one-fifth of Heifer participants affected by the storm lost an animal to the storm. Many also reported damage to farm equipment, and 70 percent of the project participants reported damage to their homes.

Chainsaws and other tools needed to clear the fallen timber and other debris were in short supply, and prices soared in affected areas after the hurricane, so Heifer sent a shipment from Arkansas.

“These are proud people and they don’t expect anything, but anything we can do is appreciated,” said Roger Jones, Heifer’s South Central program manager.

Since the storm, Jones has done what he could to help people like Sol Bolton, a member of the Perry County Self-Help Heifer project in Mississippi since 1985. Bolton has received cattle from Heifer and passed on the gift many times over the past 20 years, and he still relies on his Heifer cattle for a good portion of his income. He also harvests quince and blueberries each year from bushes provided by Heifer.

Bolton said he was grateful for the help he’d gotten from Jones since the hurricane took out pieces of his fence and peeled portions of the barn roof away, exposing his cattle feed to the rain, which caused it to rot. The drought that followed Katrina knocked out his chances of growing more rye grass before the frost.

Since then Bolton has had to confine his three cows to a small pasture with intact fences instead of letting them roam through a wooded section cut by a creek. Because the cows can’t get to the creek until fences are repaired, Bolton has to water them from the tap, pushing his municipal water bill much higher. He’s also been forced to buy the feed he would normally grow himself.

Jones said he sometimes felt overwhelmed when he considered the hardships so many were facing and all the help that’s needed to repair the billions of dollars in damage Katrina left behind.

“There’s no way we can provide enough funds for everyone, but at least we can help get back on the road to recovery,” he said.

“A Sense of Community”