Grand Isle rebuilds after Hurricanes Betsy and Katrina
David Camardelle by Earl Robicheaux, 2009; 4700.2034
Hurricane Betsy damage in Grand Isle, LA, 1965. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisiana Digital Library.
TEMPESTS: Storms in the Archives
Earl Robicheaux: The National Academy of Sciences says that Grand Isle is affected by a storm once every 2.5 years.
David Camardelle: Let me tell you . . . There's a picture right behind there, right behind your head right there. My father lost everything in 1965. That's me right there with the little white pants on top.
That was 1965 for Betsy, you see me standing there, and I remember my dad telling me that I looked at him and said, "What we going to do?" He told my brother and I, he said, "We going to go ahead and rebuild." I said, "Dad, we don't have no insurance or nothing like that." He said, "It doesn't matter. We're going to make a living here. We make our living, this is where we're raised at. I know what I'm doing to get back in the waters."
And one of the sayings that my dad said, forty years later came back and I had to use the same saying. People were coming back on the island after Betsy, and my dad said, "Just remember, it's material things. We can replace that. You didn't lose your family you didn't lose your wife, you didn't lose your kids." I didn't know forty years later after Katrina would hit, that I had to look at this young woman and look at her and look at her kids and look at her husband and say . . . First thing is, she'll look at me and she'll tell me, "Mr. David, I don't have anything left." And I know she doesn't, but I can't lie to her, but I'll tell her, "Don't worry about that. It's material things. You got your kids, you got your husband, I promise you I will get you back." And I guess being a native boy, dealing with the natives on the island, you know, we're used to that type of living. We're not asking the government to come in. We know they're going to come in and help us, but when you're a bunch of Cajun and natives, you're going to help each other, and that's what we did for Katrina.