I went to Holly Beach back in May and recorded a trip down to our favorite grocery and souvenir store, T&Ts. We go all along the beach road talking and recording camps. There’s about 6 minuts of footage and Cajun accents galore.

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At KATC.com, they’ve got After shots.

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By popular demand.. here are nearly 300 pictures of Cow Island after Rita hit. They were taken by "Troy’s son, Devin" from Cow Island.

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This is so .. sad. I keep thinking, I’m glad I got good vacation in at Holly Beach in May. I hadn’t been there in about a decade and I felt it was overdue. Me and mom and my friends all piled up and drove there.

The Daily Advertiser has some of the best pictures. http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=HURRICANE

I setup http://rita.cajuncountry.la to host any photos that people have. There are a lot of requests I saw for Intracoastal City, the Islands and Kaplan. If you’ve got any pictures or know someone that does, please email clemaire@gmail.com and I will share them.

My lil brother, Ben, is going to have some of Erath and I think Esther soon.

I saw a few people found this blog while searching for information about Holly Beach after Rita.

Sorry to report folks, Holly Beach is only foundations and sticks. T&T’s is gone. The Daquari Shop is gone. Every single thing. Here’s a before picture.

Here is an after picture, courtsey of the Associated Press.

Both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times have our favorite beach on the cover.

The second I saw Rita was heading for Sabine, I got out my necklace made with a Holly Beach shell and some crab string I got at T&T’s. I also got one of those white shell necklaces and put that on too. It’s some sort of comfort — I just wish I could be there to help.

But Holly Beach will return! A few nice visitors to the blog commented that their family will rebuild as soon as its allowed. Hell, I may even buy some property there and cart in a poodoo trailor. I just hope T&T’s gift shop comes back too.

Also, you can now download zips of pictures from KATC.com

When I heard that Rita took a turn for Port Arthur, a lump filled my throat. I knew that Port Arthur was only a few miles away (26 to be exact) from my favorite party town, Holly Beach and that Holly Beach wouldn’t be around very much longer.

While searching Google for some sort of comfort, I actually found it. Byways.com writes

The structures, which appear to be of a temporary nature, are "built to be rebuilt." Their close proximity to the Gulf makes them a prime target for the ravages of hurricanes and other tropical storms.

While I know that residents are aware of hurricanes, reading that it was built to be rebuilt makes me have hope that life will return to normal in Holly Beach in a year or two. Long live T&Ts!! Oh also, the San Francisco Chronical wrote an article about Holly Beach that’s truly heartbreaking. They refer to a huge Christian church that we stayed across from when we were in Holly Beach last night. I thought it was oddly shaped… perhaps, like a bar and sure enough, it was a bar in the early 90s.

All this talk about Holly Beach made me wonder exactly how close it was to the eye. To satify my own curiosity, I created this map that lists Holly Beach, Kaplan (where I grew up) and the two Louisiana towns currently making headlines, Lake Charles (or as we call it, Lake Chawls)

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From the National Hurricane Center: VERMILION PARISH…MAXIMUM STORM SURGE BETWEEN 10 AND 15 FEET TONIGHT AND SATURDAY. THIS WILL FLOOD LAND AROUND PECAN ISLAND AND INTRACOASTAL CITY. SECTIONS OF DELCAMBRE WILL BE UNDER WATER.

Pecan Island is 27 miles south of Kaplan. Delcambre (Del-cum) is 18 miles east. *sigh*

Even before I could compose a blog post about our time volunteering for shelters in Louisiana, another hurricane is making its way to South Louisiana. I’ll get to that with my next blog post but now I’d like to share the first story of two that details the journey that my roommates and I took about two weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit.

Our trip started out in Los Angeles on Friday, September 16th. After dinner, Casey, Adam and I finished packing and headed to LAX. We were taking the red-eye flight to Lafayette (near where I grew up) which is about 2.5 hours west of New Orleans. Our agenda? To help out pets affected by Hurricane Katrina.

Our plane left on time at 1:20am. We arrived in Houston a few hours later, found our terminal and slept through our 3 hour layover. We were all dressed for hot Louisiana and unfortunately it was freezing inside the Houston airport. We slept on the floor curled in fetal position with stinky airplane blankets covering us. We went to sleep in an empty terminal and when we woke up, it was packed with people everywhere. Some were staring but we didn’t care — we just got in a good 5 1/2 hours of sleep total which was totally necessary to get us through what was going to be an exhausting day.

Upon arrival, we met up with my friend Niki who had bought us a bunch of boudin and energy drinks. The boudin came from Arceneaux’s Corner Pantry in Lafayette and it was darn good. We were ready to head out at 11:30 am and we decided to go to Slidell against the advice of friends who’d heard that it was taking up to 5 hours to get there from Lafayette. They suggested that we wait until Sunday morning around 5am to head there but we had a scheduling conflict with one of our roomies and had to go on Saturday. Thankfully, the traffic was great the whole way there. We flew through most parts going 70 and arrived in Slidell at about 2:00pm.

There was evidence of the hurricane as early as the I-10 on Lafayette. Mobile traffic signs were giving suggestions on how to get around the affected areas near New Orleans. Later on after Baton Rouge, we hopped on I-12 and began to see some of the destruction as we neared Covington & Mandeville. There were thousands of trees that had been snapped in half and a lot of downed billboards.

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I noticed that a few people found my site by searching for phrases similar to "Katrina water tower collapse." My blog came up because I talked about the water tower collapse in Hurricane Audrey years ago so it made me wonder there was yet another water tower collapse. I was sent a PowerPoint presentation of Plaquemines Parish (Plaquemines is an native american word for persimmon) tonight that shows scenes from the area after the Hurricane and sure enough, there were amazing pictures of the Buras water tower which had collapsed.

If you’d like to see the rest of these amazing images of aftermath in Plaquemines Parish, you can click here for the Powerpoint Presentation.

My roommates and I have confirmed flights to Lafayette for next weekend! We hope to work at the pet shelters in New Iberia, Baton Rouge or Slidell. We will work with both NoahsWish.org and the Humane Society of the US.

First thing this week, we are going to get vaccinations. I hope to find out where to get some cheap/free ones while volunteering for some displaced evacuees that made it out here to Los Angeles. My doctor was quoting crazy prices.. nearly 500 for the whole 9 yards.

Casey, a roommate of mine, is a volunteer coordinator for a national non-profit  and he recommended VolunteerMatch.org. I’ve found it to be a wonderful resource. If you are interested in volunteering, check it out.

Mom bought a Newsweek - September 12, 2005 issue and was going thru it when she recognized a face from Kaplan. She then read the caption: "Holding On Tight: Volunteer Chad Meaux and 4-year-old Clara Anisha Brown embrace on a ride through flooded streets after Clara and her family were rescued in St Bernard Parish. It’s an amazing picture, and in Newsweek, its the centerfold.

Mom then sent out an email with the pictures and said: I know that there have been several individuals from the Kaplan area among other areas that have done and are doing a super job in rescue. It is nice that one of Kaplan’s finest was in the magazine.

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