GHEENS, La. — The end of the Atlantic Hurricane season is finally here. It comes after a season with 21 named storms, including Hurricane Ida, a storm that decimated many parts of southeast Louisiana. 2021 ranks as the third most active year in history, according to the National Hurricane Center.
In the community of Gheens, in Lafourche Parish, signs of Ida’s devastation are still visible just about everywhere you look even more than three months after the storm. There are plenty of blue roofs, other homes are missing roofs completely and still many other houses have been destroyed and will need to be rebuilt.
“It’s been slow, the recovery has been very slow,” said Jessican Breaux who lives in Gheens.
Breaux had nine large trees come down during the storm. Somehow all of them managed to miss hitting her house. She is one of the lucky ones. Others have it so much worse.
“Like Golden Meadow, down the bayou, they don’t have homes period,” said Breaux. You’ve got people down the bayou who are still living in tents.”
The end of Hurricane Season is welcome news for Lafourche Parish President Archie Chaisson.
“Look it feels really good to be out of the hurricane season so we don’t have to worry about any other developments while we are concentrating on the clean up,” said Chaisson.
Chaisson says the parish has all of their critical infrastructure back up. They’ve also picked up a million cubic yards of debris. There is another half million to go but getting trailers to those who lost their homes remains a problem. The parish requested 3,000. They've since received 300. Only 150 are hooked up.
“Look it's been so slow because they had to get the units here,” said Chaisson. “I discredit Fema every time because you think after, and I am just going to use Laura and Delta as an example, because you think after that they would have had a better game plan to where these things were staged, who the contractors are going to be, how the program was going to be run and none of that was in place.”
It is by no means easy here as the clean up continues but as this season comes to an end, many are breathing a sigh of relief. Another hurricane hitting after Ida would have been just too much for this community to handle.
“Thank God we didn’t have any more because that would have been just another horrific blow, I mean it would have been horrible,” said Breaux.
The 2022 Hurricane season will begin on June 1. NOAA's climate prediction center will issue its initial seasonal outlook in May.