Marine Corps News Room

http://www.fresnobee.com/columnists/mcewen/story/11270398p-12021008c.html
By Bill McEwen / The Fresno Bee

(Updated Monday, September 26, 2005, 5:59 AM)

DELCAMBRE, La. — There comes a point when the exhilaration of being rescued from your home fades into the reality of an uncertain future. Albert St. Pierre hit that wall on a sunny, wind-whipped Sunday evening the day after Hurricane Rita turned sections of Louisiana's low-lying coastal parishes into flooded ruins.

"It ain't looking so good," St. Pierre says. "I fell through the floor of my trailer three times walking through. My trailer is shot."

St. Pierre, who runs a sandblasting crew, says this after using a flatbed truck to ferry himself and neighbors to their still partially submerged homes in tiny Delcambre.

One of the neighbors, Dawn Breaux, cries as she holds her son in her lap. They're sitting on the back of the flatbed. A plastic clothes basket holds what she saved from the trailer: clothes, tennis shoes, a box of cereal.

"It's horrible," says Breaux, a convenience store clerk. "That's all I could get."

Because Hurricane Katrina ruined New Orleans, leveled Biloxi, Miss., killed more than 1,000 people and ignited debates about everything from racism to pork-barrel politics, Rita seems tame in comparison.

But if you live near the sugar-cane fields and canals of New Iberia and Vermilion parishes, Rita was the big one.

"We woke up at 4 o'clock in the morning, there wasn't water at all," Charlene Guidry says. "At 5:30, it was coming in the house."

At 6:30, the Vermilion Parish sheriff showed up in a dump truck. Twelve adults, three children and five dogs jumped aboard.

"I've never been so glad to see a dump truck," Guidry says. "I was proud to ride in that dump truck."

Guidry has lived off and on in Delcambre for 35 years. Standing on the back of St. Pierre's flatbed, she points to the house where she was raised and the homes of longtime friends. She turns and points in the opposite direction at railroad tracks.

"This is the first time we've had water come rushing over the tracks. There wasn't that much water with Lilly."

Brock Rivet stops to ask a unit of Marines on a search-and-rescue mission whether his quad can make it through the water to check on a relative's house. Then he talks about his 160-acre spread.

"I wasn't expecting this," Rivet says. "My house is off the pillars right now, floating against a fence, and my fiancée is losing her mind."

Also lost: half of his 100 cattle.

"No insurance," he says. "I just never got it. We're relying on FEMA."

There also comes a point when the exhilaration of rebuilding cities and towns gives way to exhaustion. A unit of 20 Marines and reserves from Knoxville, Tenn., has been in Louisiana since Sept. 3. Several of them served in Iraq.

"We asked for volunteers," Gunnery Sgt. Jeff Cope says. "Naturally, you're going to get the guys who are just back from Iraq. They'll volunteer for everything."

Their first hurricane mission was clearing debris and fallen trees in Slidell, a city that took the brunt of Katrina's winds and the tidal surge from Lake Pontchartrain. Last week, they left Slidell, where they lived in tents, and were headed home until Rita loomed over the Gulf Coast. They convoyed to Jackson, Miss., and awaited the call.

Sunday, with just two hours' sleep, they showed up in Delcambre, eager to pull stranded people from their homes. But people here are resourceful. Sheriff's deputies, firefighters and local residents in boats left them little to do. The folks on St. Pierre's flatbed did their part by taking two dogs from a tree and moving them to safe ground. Eight people were rescued Sunday, all before the Marines arrived.

"If a Marine doesn't have a mission, he'll create one," Cope says.

Sure enough, several of his men jump off their 7-ton transport truck and free a coralled horse in water reaching his chest. They walk the horse out to the road, where he eagerly munches on grass poking through the water.

But the horse's owner isn't around, and there's no place to take him. Cope orders them to put the horse back in his corral.

The Marines look for gas leaks, which are handled by local firefighters, and other animals to rescue. They do help pull several residents in a swamped boat to higher ground.

Near the end of the assignment, they total their day's work. They had saved a horse, a dog, a cat and two ducks. But the horse, dog and cat were still in the receding waters, awaiting their owners.

"Two ducks, that's it," says a tired Marine in the back of the truck.

After three weeks in Louisiana, they're ready to go home.

So is St. Pierre, who doesn't know where home is.
The columnist can be reached at bmcewen@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6632.