TERREBONNE PARISH, La. — Down in the bayou communities of Terrebonne Parish, the scenes are the same as folks like Timothy Picou deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Ida.
“It was terrible man,” Picou said. “My heart was breaking for everybody down here. I was fearing the worst for my house.”
Luckily, Picou says his Montegut home is livable, and by that, he means he has a roof.
“I’m very fortunate I still have a roof over my head,” Picou said. “My neighbors, my friends, most lost pretty much everything.”
From Picou’s driveway to Shane Chouest’s porch in Chauvin, it’s a continuous landscape of snapped trees, damaged homes and lives changed.
“This sure ain’t good,” Chouest said. “This is ridiculous here.”
These communities are also dealing with a harsh reality of no gas, no electricity, no water and no communications.
“We have nothing here,” Picou said. “We have absolutely nothing.”
For a lot of people, they’re also dealing with the fact they no longer have a place to call home.
“I’m having to take whatever I can save and get it out,” Sherry Atteberry said.
Atteberry says her Montegut home of 25 years will have to be demolished.
“It puts you in a state of shock. It’s like it’s not real and then you see all your losses,” Atteberry said.
Her home used to be her parents’. The storm ripped the roof off. A before and after photo shows just how much damage Hurricane Ida did.
“It’s just too much. To see my house go, it’s going to be tragic,” Atteberry said. “It’s going to be tragic because it’s all I’ve got left of my mom and dad.”
Tarps are slowly being put on homes in these communities, but so many homes have no place to put one. Supplies in Terrebonne Parish are staged at the Civic Center, miles away in Houma, but aren’t enough to meet the needs down the bayou where the parish estimates about 60 percent of homes to be unsafe to live in.
“They’re desperately needing help and it’s like they’re targeting just certain communities and it ain’t fair,” Atteberry said. “It’s not only us. It’s not only in Houma or New Orleans. It’s all of Terrebonne and Lafourche.”
And all of it in need help and hope because communities are simply in distress.
Parish leaders say more supplies are on the way, it just takes time to get them here and get them distributed. There’s still no estimation of time when basic utilities will be restored.