After the storm, moving away or elevating camps in Cocodrie
Houston Foret by Don Davis and Carl Brasseaux, 2009; 4700.2072
Click photo to enlarge
Elevated camp in Cocodrie, LA. 2004. Louisiana State Archives
TEMPESTS: Storms in the Archives
Carl Brasseaux: But when they did leave [the coast], where did they go?
Houston Foret: When they leave from Bay St. Elaine and they come to Cocodrie. Like the people from Cocodrie was used to leave and go to Chauvin. Then through the years with the hurricanes, people started moving further up. Now if we would have had the regulations that we got today - if you want to build, you got to elevate your camp up - if they'd have done that forty, fifty years ago, we'd still have a lot of people living at Cocodrie. So the answer to that is, elevate you camp, the hurricane comes, water goes underneath.
In those days, people had . . . It was all small camps and they're all almost on the ground, just two, three feet high they put them. Well, when the hurricane would come . . . well not exactly every time, it would wash away. What they would do, every one of them rooms, they would cut a hole in the floor two feet by two feet. When the hurricanes come, you just pull that plug out and the water comes in and the water goes back out. There was no insulation or nothing like in today's world, you know. And that's how they survived through all of that. But we would get a hurricane in Cocodrie and you could come the day after the hurricane . . . you could come to Cocodrie, there's no more water. You got a mess, you got mud in your yard, but there's no more water. Well, when you get to Chauvin, Houma, stuff like that, it's all along the levee. Once the levee breaks over, you got a bathtub. It takes three or four weeks before it dries out. So they're in worse shape being inside the levee than if you was outside the levee.