One Year Ago Today.....August 15, 2016

Something most people don't think about during a flood of this magnitude is that not only are homes and businesses lost, but so are city halls, police stations, fire departments, EMS centers.  Living in these communities, many of these people not only lost their work places they also lost their homes too.  Most had no idea what was happening to their families as they evacuated strangers.

Also  know that while about 160,000 homes were under water, the majority of Baton Rouge did not flood.  In the days after the it became two separate worlds:  the flooded and the non-flood people.  Even though they watched us try to patch our lives and property back together, they really couldn't conceive what it felt like to lose everything.  My own friends couldn't understand why it was taking so long to find doors, or air ducts, or workers.  There were no workers to be found for any price. 

I was not prepared for what I saw the day we returned to the house.

The water line was halfway up the damned wall!  

 These are my cookbooks from the kitchen.  We had so many books, most of them were wet and unusable. 

Things floated out of closets.  I remember a friend who had been through Katrina within blocks of the levee break.  He said everything in their house was piled up against the front wall.  Nothing was left in any room.  They had water over the roof and when it drained out quickly everything floated with the receding water.  I guess it could have been worse, but not by much.

I was the keeper of the family antiques.  At some point I told my brother, I should have let you take some of these pieces.  He assured me that he would have just lost it all in the flood when Isaac hit his home 3 years before.

He was right, there was no safe places it seems.






There is a feeling you have, when you are exhausted from the physical work, you are exhausted from the inability to close your eyes to sleep and exhausted from the never ending pain in your gut.  And you pause to look around you, you would rather work past that exhaustion than see the reality of your "stuff" gutted from your house and sitting on the street.




I will never forget standing on the porch watching the claw of the black truck thoughtlessly grab my stuff and unceremoniously bring it to the truck bed. 









Then they ripped out the cabinets, pulled up the carpet, tore out the sheetrock.   And piled it in front of the house too. 

 And you know most of the rest.  If you have followed my blog, if not, go back and see my day to day posts if you like.  We did have flood insurance; we did have a good contractor; we did have money of our own to fund the start of reconstruction until the insurance came through.  We did not have a mortgage, which caused grief for many people because the mortgaage company takes the insurance money and doles it out as you sent them invoices.

And there are at least 4 neighbors on my block alone who have not even started yet, a year later.  None had insurance.   Only 15% of the flooded homes were covered by flood insurance.  Those who did not have flood insurance were helped by FEMA and private interests.  They were awarded about $70,000 in tax payer money separately from the approx. $20,000 given out in the  early days after the flood.  My question is, why have flood insurance?