After Louisiana Floods, Help Needed

Prairieville

A residential street in Prairieville remains flooded more than a week after rainstorms devastated the area.

The Borams

Deborah and Glenn Boram of St. Amant stand in the dining room of their house, which is raised 47 inches off the ground but still took on nine inches of water. Glenn’s 91-year-old mother lives with the couple, and the three of them are currently staying with their daughter a few miles away in Gonzales. The Borams recently canceled their flood insurance after several years of no issues with floodwater.

Northeast Baton Rouge

Personal belongings and building materials are stacked along the street in front of a home in northeast Baton Rouge.

Professional DJ

Marvin Weatherspoon, 66, uses a hair dryer in an attempt to salvage a CD player he needs as a professional DJ in the carport of his home in northeast Baton Rouge. When he decided to evacuate with his dog, the floodwater was already up to the hood of his Jeep. “He looking at me like I’m crazy, should’ve been left [already],” he remembers. “We floated out.”

Sunnyhill Avenue

Ruined personal belongings and building materials are stacked in front of homes on Sunnyhill Avenue in northeast Baton Rouge.

St. Amant

Melissa Tortorich of St. Amant cleans out her refrigerator after several days with no electricity. “It came in so fast,” she recalls. “Monday at 5:30 it was at my ankles outside, and by Tuesday it started leaking in [the house]. We watched the water leak in.”

Never Flooded Before

Brian Becnel, left, Justin Morrissey, Jayden Duplessis and James Morrissey of Sorrento stand in the driveway of Becnel’s home, which took on five feet of water in the flooding. The house is more than 70 years old and had never flooded until the past week’s record-setting rainstorms.

18 Inches in Two Hours

Richard Kisamore of Livingston stands in his front yard next to a heaping pile of his personal possessions and building materials from his house, which he says took on almost 18 inches of water in just two hours. “The thing I feel the baddest about is, well, my wife’s a reader. She has thousands of books. I just brought out my first wheelbarrow of her books,” he says.

Love Thy Neighbor

Gray Bailey, a 53-year-old dentist in St. Amant, cooks sausages and hot dogs in the parking lot of the Swamp Shack during a volunteer event sponsored by the local organizations Love Thy Neighbor and Business Associates of Ascension.

Swamp Shack

Pam Grettner of St. Amant serves food to community members at the volunteer event at the Swamp Shack. Volunteers arrived at 8:30 in the morning and estimated that they’d served up to 1,000 people over the course of six hours.

Convoy of Hope

Bob Brewer, a 64-year-old regular volunteer with the faith-based Convoy of Hope in Baton Rouge, moves pallets of fresh fruit destined for distribution to flood victims in a parking lot in east Baton Rouge.

Water Reached the Mattress

Joyce Haskins sits on her cot at a Red Cross emergency shelter at North Corbin Junior High School. Haskins was asleep in her home in Walker when she heard the National Guard pounding on her door. When she woke, she moved her hand to the edge of her bed and felt the water, which had risen almost to the top of her mattress. She was pulled to safety aboard a National Guard boat and has been staying at the Red Cross shelter ever since.

North Corbin

Angie Green of Walker feeds her granddaughter Laniah Neff a bottle on a cot at the Red Cross emergency shelter at North Corbin Junior High School.

Northeast Baton Rouge

Ronnie Edwards, 46, left, and Ed Cooper, 31, of Baton Rouge remove the flooring from a Rite Aid pharmacy in northeast Baton Rouge. The two men are employees of Teasdale Fenton Catastrophic Services, an emergency response team based in Ohio.

Emergency Cleanup

An emergency cleanup crew clears debris from the front lawns of homes in northeast Baton Rouge.

Cemetery Destruction

Not even the dead are undisturbed, as floodwaters left damage at this small cemetery in northeast Baton Rouge.

Denham Springs

The contents of several businesses along Range Avenue are stacked in the street in downtown Denham Springs.

More Slideshows

• Tour of Haiti Recovery
  
• Citizen outrage! These stories made our blood boil
  
• Victims of VA gridlock
  

Be an E-Activist. Sign up for the AARP Advocate e-newsletter