November 2, 2020 — Two days after Hurricane Laura barreled through Louisiana in August, Tameka Nelson returned to her beloved daycare facility in Lake Charles to find it in ruins. She fell to her knees and sobbed.
The storm tore part of the roof off. Inside, years worth of toys, crafts and important documents were destroyed. Nothing was salvageable and the building would have to be demolished.
“It was devastating. Everything I’ve worked for is gone,” said Nelson, 40, who’s run Nelson Academy daycare for 15 years. “I lost everything.”
Nelson managed to find a rental building and spent her savings constructing a new daycare space. But with no state funding and a deadline to get approval to open the space by the year’s end, Nelson fears she’ll run out of time and money.
Lifelong Cameron resident Jennifer Picou, 57, and her husband Terry, 60, first lost their home to Rita 15 years ago. When Laura blew through and tore the roof off their home this year, the couple replaced it with a makeshift one. Then Delta arrived, tearing it off and further flooding the house.
They now live in an RV and struggle to manage their local fisheries facility without electricity and proper running water or refrigeration. However, Picou maintained they’re lucky because their house is insured, as many residents’ homes in Cameron are not.
It’s unclear how many Cameron residents will be able to afford to rebuild homes after the hurricanes this year because of inflated construction costs and increasingly strict building codes.