Janie Verret Luster lost her home to Hurricane Ida in 2021. A lifelong Terrebonne Parish resident, she has weathered more than a dozen storms. Living on the bank of Bayou Dularge, flooding is simply accepted as an inevitable part of life.
Ahead of Ida, she had prepared. It wasn’t enough.
“The sofas were raised, the refrigerator, the freezer, and everything,” she said. “But no, this time we lost the roof.”
The 150-mile-per-hour winds lifted the roof of both her and her daughter’s houses, leaving the inside to rot after the rain poured inside. Sitting on the ramp of her FEMA trailer, Luster’s home stood behind her. Just one half of the house remains, but soon even that will have to go. Ida’s winds shifted the foundation.
“I've never experienced that, but again, we've never experienced the strength of a hurricane like Ida,” she said.
Compared to that, Luster said she felt Francine “was good to us.”
“It's scary, but we survived,” she said.
Hurricane Francine made landfall in Terrebonne Parish as a Category 2 storm with 100-mile-per-hour winds, dropping more than 4 inches of rain on the already saturated soil. The bayou behind her house spilled over, and on Thursday, floodwaters still covered her yard and portions of the road. The wind also killed seven of her chickens and tore apart her shed.
For Luster, it’s just par for the course. As her sons and grandchildren stacked debris, she said, “We can count our blessings. … Now, the cleanup begins.”
Wind caused the most damage in Terrebonne Parish, ripping apart some roofs and downing trees and power lines. At its peak, 60,000 residents were without power. It could take days until power is fully restored, but, overall, Parish President Jason Bergeron said Terrebonne fared well during Francine.
“It’s better than we expected,” Bergeron said.
Francine tested the local levees with up to 11 feet of storm surge. Bergeron said one of the shortest levees on the western side of the parish near Montegut was overtopped, but no houses in Terrebonne flooded, even with the intense rainfall. The parish responded to one call for rescue.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell joined Gov. Jeff Landry and other Louisiana officials on a flyover of the damage Thursday. Bergeron, Landry and other leaders took the opportunity to highlight the success of the local Morganza-to-the-Gulf Hurricane Protection System.
Built largely with local tax dollars, Landry and U.S. Sen. John Kennedy called on FEMA to account for the system in the agency’s latest flood maps and give Terrebonne residents a discount on flood insurance.
“Just imagine, the damages would be billions and billions and billions of dollars,” Kennedy said at a press conference. “Louisiana needs to get some credit for that.”
Criswell agreed the investments in local resiliency paid off, minimizing the impact the area could’ve seen from Francine.
More than 500 residents in Terrebonne and Lafourche still live in FEMA trailers as the region continues to recover from Ida. Bergeron said he’s hopeful the attention from Francine will help bring more federal aid to his parish, similar to how Ida helped Lake Charles receive more money two years after Hurricane Laura.
“You hate to see that happen,” he said. “But again, if that's the thing that moves the needle a little bit, it matters.”
