Uncertainty Has Washed Over Towns in the Bayou

Joseph Rodgers had to wade those last few feet to get home Monday. He stood thigh-deep in the gasoline-streaked water, his oversize T-shirt plastered to his belly by humidity and the 90-degree heat, and took it all in.

In the front yard, garbage bags floated past a sunken boat. The trunk of a massive oak had crushed his two trucks. Its branches were speared through the roof of his house. Through the open door, Rodgers, 60, could see a good 6 inches of water rippling gently down the hall.

“I been in the bayou all my life, and maybe one time I seen things this bad,” he said. “We are in trouble here.”

In this corner of Jefferson Parish, south of New Orleans, residents trickled back in after Hurricane Rita flooded Jean Lafitte, Lafitte and Barataria, communities that are home to more than 2,000 people.

The parish encompasses industrial sites, Lexus-filled suburbs, historic areas that date back to the jazz pioneers, and the bayou, where some feed their children with what they can catch. Officials tout it as much for its casinos as its alligator swamps. Though many of the parish’s communities are white, it has ethnically diverse pockets. In and around Barataria, houses owned by blacks sit alongside those owned by whites, all in a few feet of water.

Officials had ordered a mandatory evacuation of the area Thursday, then rescued the holdouts on Saturday after a breached levee sent water levels even higher. People whose memories stretch back to Hurricane Betsy in 1965 say this may be the worst flooding the parish has ever seen.

On Monday, houses stood like outcroppings in pools 2 to 3 feet deep. Minnows darted down streets and coffins bobbed among submerged tombstones. Men and women paddled shallow-bottomed flat boats up to their front steps. Four-by-four trucks trailed frothy wakes, rolling gingerly past signs that said: “Go Slow. No Waves. We have guns.”

In an area where people know how to live with the water, even when it intrudes from time to time, there was a sense of shock at the damage Hurricane Rita had wrought, especially after Katrina spared them any flooding.

The destruction went beyond damage to homes and trailers pried open like tin cans. In a community where locals say two out of three men make their money shrimping, many say the storms have crushed an already faltering industry. There is fear about how people will make ends meet, anger at the official response and resentment that all the attention and resources seem to go to glossy, urban New Orleans.

“Everyone talks about the Lower 9th Ward,” Rodgers said, referring to the New Orleans neighborhood that Rita reflooded. “What about us? Jefferson Parish is letting us down. Where is FEMA?” he asked. “They say they’re helping people, but all they do is talk. I ain’t seen nobody down here get help.”

Because Katrina and Rita downed phone lines, residents said, it was hard to call the Federal Emergency Management Agency number. Many said it had taken them three to four weeks to get through and file a claim.

“Even if you could phone, they give you one number to call -- that’s one number for a million people,” said Alvin Fabre, whose house sat in 6 inches of water. “ ‘America’s Most Wanted’ offers you four numbers,” Fabre said of the TV show. “Now why can’t the government do that?”

Jefferson Parish had at least two pumps spewing plumes of murky water back into Bayou Barataria on Monday, but residents felt parish officials could be doing more. “We have to wait for the water to go down before we can do a thing, and in the meantime there isn’t even anywhere to throw the garbage,” Rodgers said. Judging by previous floods, he estimated it would take at least a week to drain the area.

The Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees the levees and pumping system in other New Orleans parishes, said it works in Jefferson Parish only at the request of officials there. Susan Jackson, a corps spokeswoman, said the parish had not requested help.

Jefferson Parish officials did not return calls for comment.

Many locals worry about the long-term impact. Few have flood insurance. Katrina battered and sunk many of the shrimp boats. Pollutants released by Katrina will deal another blow to the industry, which was already reeling from competition from cheap foreign imports.

“The shrimping industry is shot,” said Mike Mamolo, 57, a Lafitte shrimper. “I tell you what, it’s pitiful. You can’t eat the shrimp, can’t eat the crab. They say they’re going to help us, and then there’s always the Lord above, but I don’t know. I’ve never seen it this bad.”

Mamolo said most shrimpers couldn’t afford insurance for their boats. Now fuel is expensive and hard to come by. So is ice. Of the shrimpers whose boats are intact, “some will go to Morgan City, some will go to Alabama or Florida, and some will just suffer this year,” said Dana Mamolo, a 32-year-old homemaker who is both neighbor and distant relation to Mike.

She had rolled up her jeans and was wading through Barataria streets checking on neighbors and taking in the damage. Her 7-year-old, Prentis, was chasing a crab swimming down the street. Mamolo, who rescued six dogs after Rita blew through, said the area was used to some flooding.

A “high tide” -- what people here call two to three days of a strong southerly wind -- will send water from the bayou spilling into yards. Sometimes levees leak. Kids play in the water, the grown-ups use sandbags against it. Just about everyone has a sturdy pair of rubber boots, if not chest-high waders.

“But this was the worst,” said Edna Rogas. The 37-year-old school bus driver was bleaching down the floors of her grandfather-in-law’s house, trying to stop mold from taking hold after the house took on 6 inches of water.

Since schools have been damaged, Rogas isn’t sure when she’ll be able to go back to work. Her husband, Cary, makes his living on the Miss Edna, his shrimp boat.

The boat survived the storms, but he said his work was at an “absolute halt,” in part because he lacked fuel and ice.

“We’ve been through a lot of storms,” Rogas said as she scrubbed the wooden floors and Cary pulled up sodden carpet. “It’s never been like this.”