The region is no stranger to storms. Stockpiling canned goods, bottled water and batteries is a springtime ritual, along with the hurricane tracking charts handed out at supermarkets. Boarding up windows
Rita, a Category 5 storm while in the Gulf of Mexico, had been catastrophic. But it also signaled the beginning of an onslaught of punishing storms, with Ike and Laura, which arrived in Cameron Parish on Aug. 27, as the most damaging.
Plenty of people just rebuilt higher. The public library in the community of Cameron looked like a fortress on stilts, built after the parish’s main branch had been destroyed by Rita and then again by Ike.
But many others moved — either to the subdivisions and neighborhoods straddling the parish line, just below Lake Charles, or outside the coastal region entirely. Dr. Dupke, the parish coroner, said he knew of people who fled toward Shreveport, or into Texas and farther. It was disheartening, he said, to see neighbors who felt compelled to give up on their hometown. “Then again,” he added, “they’ll bring to Arkansas the right way to boil shrimp.”
