"Some Hurricane Ida survivors may have no choice but to leave. Sooner or later, people across the country will be in the same bind."
"When I met Flynn Hoob on Monday, he was standing in front of his home. Or rather, what was left of his home. It was the day after Hurricane Ida, and Hoob’s one-story house in Bourg, Louisiana, had fallen off its concrete pilings and sunk halfway into the nearby bayou. He had ridden out the storm inside until his house had tipped over, at which point he fled to the flooded-out bar next door and waited out the storm there for eight hours.
I asked Hoob about what happens now: Did he plan to relocate? Find a new house farther off the bayou, or maybe farther inland, where the hurricanes weren’t as bad? “Nnnnnope,” Hoob said. “We rebuild and we keep going; that’s what we do. We love the bayou, man. We’re not going anywhere.”
Ida has destroyed likely thousands of homes in Terrebonne Parish, the coastal area that includes Bourg. As I toured the area in the immediate aftermath of the storm, I saw damage that was hard to comprehend: Roofs had been ripped off, facades had been torn apart, and homes had been pushed off their pilings. The worst-damaged properties were the prefab trailers that house many low-income residents—most of the trailers had been flipped over or smashed to rubble. Those who lived in these totaled properties were not around to answer my questions, because they didn’t have homes that could be repaired, but everyone I met said the same thing: They planned to rebuild where they lived, and no one was considering moving someplace else."
