![]() I have no doubt it’s going to happen again. ![]() By mid-June, she was almost done, waiting on some kitchen cabinets and other details. She had to be rescued last summer with her tabby cat and her French bulldog by two men in a boat.Īfter spending a week with her boss, she lived with the family of one of her children in Walker and returned home in mid-May. Kathy Huffstutter, 60, said she isn’t so sure she could return after another flood. They had a strong desire to get back home, but many expressed wariness about the possibility that their street will flood again one day. Still, after the shock of seeing so much water on their street and in their homes last August, many residents described contradictory impulses on their return. No home on West Wendover has been elevated or demolished, and all seem on the path to reuse as they were. Some are waiting on additional grants from the state’s Restore Louisiana program, but most, because of their generally solid financial circumstances before the flood, are at the lowest rungs of priority.ĭespite 4 feet to nearly 6 feet of water and FEMA’s initial determination that five homes at the end of the block were substantially damaged and in need of demolition or elevation, the city-parish has found otherwise. Small Business Administration loans, residents said. But more residents have returned than not and are closing in on or have completed their home restorations.Īll but a few have had to do so without help from flood insurance, cobbling together their own resources, the equity of do-it-yourself efforts, aid from FEMA and, in some cases, U.S. Some gutted houses look otherwise untouched and unoccupied. A few new neighbors bought houses from people too discouraged to return, and a “for sale” sign sits in front of another. No longer could they believe their small piece of Baton Rouge would be spared this kind of natural disaster.įederal Emergency Management Agency trailers remain in the front yards of four homes. But the street doesn’t look as it once did, and many people described a profound loss in their sense of security about the neighborhood. West Wendover is just one block in the 919-home Monticello neighborhood at the southeast corner of Greenwell Springs Road and North Sherwood Forest Drive, one collection of stories of shock, struggle and recovery from the August 2016 flood that affected an estimated 92,000 households statewide.Ī year after the flood, the Winfreys and many of the residents of West Wendover are back. Although she and her family escaped, they returned to a wrecked house and to three waterlogged vehicles they hadn’t been able to move in time. “I was like, ‘I’ve been here for 28 years there’s no way water’s going to come in the house,’ ” Winfrey said recently.Įventually it became apparent that, flood zone or not, the Winfreys’ house on West Wendover Drive was taking on water, rising eventually to 5 feet.
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