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ida hits home

But every outbuilding was gone, including the corn crib. We never found a feather, much less a chicken. Still, we picked up the pieces, and life eventually returned to normal. And then there was Katrina. I was working on Page One of The Wall Street Journal then. When news of the catastrophic levee collapses moved over the wires, I was dispatched to cover the aftermath as the Louisiana-savvy guy on staff. I would spend the next four months in New Orleans and the fishing communities nearby, writing stories of both unbelievable destruction and uncanny courage and resilience as the area struggled to recover from an unimaginable disaster. (A great deal of that reportage is in my book, The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous .) Of course, the history of Katrina is now written, and New Orleans and vicinity did recover—spectacularly so. Which gives me cause for optimism about the recovery — long and hard as it will no doubt be — of my homeplace. It was wrenching to read in the post-Ida headlines that 40% of the homes in Houma had been rendered uninhabitable. My brother Chris texted photos of wind-gutted houses in Chauvin. (He lost part of his roof, but his place stood.) My niece, Sunny, who lives near Atlanta but whose Cajun roots still run deep, went with a small relief convoy to Grand Isle. But natural disasters are hardly unique to the Motherland. Tornado alley spans much of the Midwest. She sent pictures that resembled a place that had been carpet-bombed. And yet, miraculously, no one died. And those much-derided Morganza-to-the-Gulf levees — the very ones the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decertified a few years back, saying they were inadequate to protect in a major storm — performed extraordinarily well. They held; had they not, Ida might have been Katrina writ large. The feds were wrong and we were right. It proves that local wisdom and determination to build the system without federal support was the absolute right thing to do. (Hey, Congress, now that we’ve passed our test, give us the money to lift the system to New Orleans levels.)

I understand those who argue that it’s folly to continually rebuild in an area smack in the middle of a hurricane corridor. Remember the post-Katrina op-ed in the Washington Post that said New Orleans should be abandoned and turned into a marshy barrier against future storms? But natural disasters are hardly unique to the Motherland. I went through the scary 1989 San Francisco earthquake that killed 63 people and caused $6 billion in damage. But no one seriously suggested that San Francisco be relocated to, say, Sacramento because it sits atop a well-known earthquake fault. San Francisco rebuilt, and property values have never been higher. And, of course, there’s this. Far more people died in New England from Ida’s torrential rains than died in South Louisiana from the actual storm. There’s no completely safe place to which to relocate. I was very aware of the pessimism after the first few days of Ida. People awoke to shocking scenes. In some neighborhoods, entire blocks of houses had been flattened or crushed. Power was out and would stay out. Gasoline to run generators was in short supply. A lot of people had lost everything— well, everything material. But then came little vignettes of optimism. My brother in Chauvin took in a couple who’d lost their house. But they were hoping to rebuild, as was the guy down the street who now slept in a tent in his living room to ward off the rain that poured unimpeded through his missing roof. He wasn’t going anywhere. And less than a week after Ida’s landfall, when the roads had been finally cleared of trees and boats, I got a text from my friend, John Weimer, who was part of a relief caravan that had made its way to Chauvin, bringing water, foodstuffs, and gasoline to people in urgent need. It was a scene repeated all over Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes and throughout the sprawling footprint of Ida’s landfall. Our generosity is contagious. Along with pictures of destroyed camps and houses, John, a Thibodaux boy who happens to be the Chief Justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, took the pulse of the people he met there. “People are resilient and resolute,” he wrote. “Please send prayers.”

This is not to make light of what it will take to return to “normal.” Still, when I think about the arc of our story, we are a people of resil- ience and perseverance. We remain singular on the American landscape, a culture carved into a spectacular watery wilderness that is by some measures still the seventh-largest wetland on Earth (if, alas, a shrinking one). We are truly a gumbo of people, descen- dants of aristocrats, pioneers, adventurers, refugees, pirates; people who, freed from bondage, rose up to make spectacular contributions to our polyglot culture. Our gifts to the world are substantial: jazz, Cajun, Zydeco, and Swamp Pop music. We’ve given the world gumbo — and hands-down the best regional cooking in all of America. We understand that boudin is about as close to Heaven as you can come on Earth. We know how to dance. I can assure you this is not necessarily true in Iowa, though I have nothing against the place. I think about my Swiss-German Toups forbears who got to Louisiana in 1721 after a long and hazardous sea voyage from France. They were awarded a pig and 40 arpents (about 34 acres) on the Mississippi River in a place with no infrastructure, no modern medicine, and plenty of dangers like malaria, yellow fever, hurricanes, and venomous snakes. Yet they persevered and eventually prospered, never thinking of giving up because, while existence was sometimes challenging, South Louisiana became home. Not just home, but the home of the heart. We should keep building those levees. But I doubt Ida will diminish that spirit. Ken Wells grew up on the banks of Bayou Black deep in South Louisiana’s Cajun belt. He got his first newspaper job as a 19-year-old college dropout, covering car wrecks and gator sightings for The Courier , a Houma, Louisiana weekly, while still helping out in his family’s snake-collecting business.Wells’ journalism career includes positions as senior writer and features editor for The Wall Street Journal’s Page One. His latest book, Gumbo Life: Tales from the Roux Bayou , is in stores now.

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