IT'S BEEN FOUR YEARS

I woke up this morning and put on my Tee Shirt from the Cameron Parish incident related to Hurricane Rita...mostly to remember the folks that lost everything...and the government that forgot they existed.

I flew to Cameron Parish on December 1, 2005 getting to the courthouse about 1:00 a.m. Cameron time on 12/2....the drive from the airport to the courthouse was devastating. There was destruction everywhere and there were no structures left standing intact although you could see where they had been and could see the piles of rubble. I passed a house nearly intact sitting about half way on the road---when I got to the courthouse I found out that this house had been located about a block south of the courthouse. Where I passed it was about a hundred road miles from the courthouse but was only about thirty miles from it's original location as the crow flies.

I noticed that there were a lot of power line crews working along the road trying to restore power to the area...I also noticed that two of the crews were from the power company that services the rural area around where I live. I stopped and asked them what they were doing there. They told me their company had sent all of their crews except for one that they held for emergencies at home to Cameron to try to get them back up and running. I asked them if the government was paying for that and they told me NO WAY---this was their and the companies gift to the parish that the government forgot existed. They completely restored the power to this area of Louisiana by 12/19.

I really hated this assignment because the few thousand people in Cameron had to compete with the few million people over by New Orleans that were also left with their lives in a shambles---the difference is the folk in Cameron Parish really didn't get much help---none until mid November---I tried to find their web site this morning on the rehab from the hurricane but couldn't find it....but will continue to look for it---I did find a web site regarding the parish but it didn't have the Hurricane rehabilitation on it.

I flew home from this assignment on December 22 and most of the work toward recovery was yet to be done. I felt like I abandoned them---just like the government did.....