DELCAMBRE — When Loveless Decuire of Delcambre evacuated to Lafayette with his family last week before Hurricane Ike flooded his neighborhood and town, he forgot to secure one of his most prized possessions before leaving: his basketball.

The search began Sunday when he returned home with his family to assess the damage caused by Ike.

“I found it all the way over there, about two blocks that way by the school,” Decuire, 11, said as he pointed toward Delcambre High School, which remained closed Monday and today in Ike’s wake.

Advertisement

Monday marked a day of recuperation, an all too familiar frustration for many Delcambre residents as the floodwaters receded enough for some roads to be reopened. What many found was eerily reminiscent to the devastation wrought by Hurricane Rita.

Almost every street was littered with wood and debris, and residents spent much of the day salvaging what they could from the flood and helping others around them clean up. Tree limbs, ruined furniture, mattresses and various appliances piled up along the edge of most properties.

Delcambre even smelled like Ike, reeking of the unmistakable stench left by a flood. It rained intermittently throughout the day, adding insult to injury for a town that just did this three years ago.

Few were spared what was essentially a repeat of Rita as far as storm surge was considered, though many residents said Rita was far worse when you consider wind damage and power outages.

Houses in the low-lying areas and in the southeastern part of town and closer to Vermilion Bay saw the worst flooding by far, and much of that area was still partly underwater Monday. Businesses along Louisiana 14 were barren and lifeless with broken windows and distinct watermarks.

Police blocked off Louisiana 14 west of Delcambre Monday and said water was still too high for vehicles to pass through to Erath and Abbeville, which made getting to work a nonstarter for Jaqueline Taylor, who sat on her porch Monday morning with her family on North Landry Street.

“We had a lot of water in the shed, but other than that we made out OK,” she said. 

Taylor evacuated with her family Friday to a shelter at Iberia Middle School. 

“It really wasn’t as bad as Rita for us,” she said.

Driving through several inches of water to reach his home, Delcambre Mayor Carol Broussard hopes federal aid arrives quicker this time for his constituents.

“They always promise you the world,” he said between the incessant phone calls he received throughout the day. “We’re all still recovering from Rita here.”

Broussard spent Monday coordinating the relief effort but also trying to tend to his own losses — Broussard’s home, which had just been restored from Rita, held at least 15 inches of floodwaters over the weekend.

“We’ve got to try something different now,” he said while hauling a dehumidifier into his house. “We’re considering just living on the second floor. If we can get our kitchen up there, we’ll do it.”

Broussard’s wife, Alexis, said they lost most appliances and furniture on the first floor.

“I’m a librarian at Delcambre Elementary, and we got water there, too,” she said. “So it’s kind of been a double whammy.”

The Broussard home looked something like an island Monday, surrounded by water on all sides — including a sugar cane field that resembled a lake.

Around town, everyone was lending a hand despite a generally downtrodden mood and overcast skies. Inmates from the Iberia Parish Jail prepared a staging area for the American Red Cross, which set up camp around midday to provide relief. Children swept driveways and carried tree limbs to the street.

Decuire, the boy who found his basketball, was hard at work performing various cleanup tasks at the homes of family members and neighbors.

“I get about $5 to $10 for each thing I do,” he said. “I guess it’s better than nothing.”

The last two weeks have been disorienting for Decuire and his cousins Tylar Curry, 8, and Tyrik Landry, 9. Curry said he enjoyed the adventure of evacuating to a Lafayette hotel but described the room as unclean and “way too expensive.”

Decuire said it was hard to enjoy the two days off school because he was worried about his belongings.

“I have one of the bottom lockers,” he said. “So I’m hoping my stuff’s OK.” 

Hurricanes Gustav and Ike also disrupted extracurricular activities over the past two weeks.

“Every time we’re supposed to play a football game, a hurricane comes,” Decuire said. “We’re supposed to play this weekend, but I have a feeling another hurricane is going to come. We haven’t played yet.”

A block away, Sylvester George smoked and reminisced about old storms with his neighbor Ernest Comeaux.

“I couldn’t help but think of Audrey,” said Comeaux, 76, referring to the 1956 storm that killed more than 600 people and devastated most of southwestern Louisiana and Texas. “We’ve passed a few storms sitting right here on this porch.”

George did not have much water damage and said he sat on his porch for much of Ike watching the water rise. Someone has to stay, he insists, to make sure everything’s intact.

“I was in the service, so I’ve got a bit of survival in me,” George said with a laugh. “But out of all the storms I’ve seen here, I still ain’t seen nothing like the typhoon I saw in Vietnam. Now that was a storm.”

In Delcambre, it was the first of what promises to be many recovery days to come.