Hurricane Laura left over a million Louisiana residents without power for weeks, 200,000 without drinking water and many homes uninhabitable. Only 43 days later, and 13 miles east from the place Hurricane Laura made landfall, Hurricane Delta hit an already battered southwest Louisiana and undid the area’s rebuilding process.
Public relations junior Austin Wade experienced the stress of watching his family struggle to recover from both storms.
Wade’s father, who lives in Lake Charles, nearly lost his home from water damage after Hurricane Laura. He began repairing the interior of his house while he waited for the necessary supplies to fix the hole in his roof, but Hurricane Delta upended his progress.
“His idea, as well as many others, was to start repairing the inside of his house with a tarp over the roof, that way by the time the shingles are back the inside is already finished,” Wade said. “Whenever Delta came through, it ripped the tarp off the roof and ruined the progress he had made. Delta just totally ruined that and brought him back to square one.”
Wade said his mother’s house only saw minor damage from Delta, but she had just gotten her power back a week and a half before Delta hit. Wade said not being able to help his family has been difficult.
“It hurts because your parents bring you up and stay strong your whole childhood, and being hours away and watching his life fall apart while you’re trying to get your life together–you know, I’m in college. I’m just starting my life, and I hate seeing my dad struggle, but it’s just one thing after another,” Wade said. “As it [Hurricane Delta] looked like it was going to hit Lake Charles, we had all started texting. I was asking them, ‘do you guys need me to come help you pack again, help you guys come this way?
“I didn’t know if they had enough money to evacuate again because my family had to stay out of Lake Charles staying in Air B&Bs and hotels for weeks before they could return to Lake Charles, so I knew money was tight.”
Biology senior Mark Yeats said he and his family weren’t expecting to get much rainfall at their home in Central.
“Once we saw the ditches start rising up and that it wasn’t draining, we realized there might be a problem,” Yeats said.
Yeats said the winds from Hurricane Delta were preventing the river he lives by from draining like it normally would.
“It wasn’t really high that morning, so I went to work,” Yeats said. “Then, in the middle of my shift, I got a phone call from my family and it was like, ‘hey we’ve got to move some stuff out of the house upstairs.’”

“We had to evacuate to my brother’s house in Walker,” Yeats said. “The whole night–I think it was me, my grandmother, my grandfather, my mother, my father, brother, his three kids and then my sister-in-law–all in a two-bedroom house that one night, so it was pretty packed.

We went to sleep that night thinking our house flooded just because on our way out we had already seen other people’s houses getting a few inches of water, so we were assuming ours was next. We were pretty upset.”

 Fortunately, the water stopped just before rising above his home’s front porch, leaving no water damage inside the house and preventing Yeats and his family from having to move a second time because of a flood.

 “We went to bed Friday night thinking, ‘we flooded–this is the second time in four years’ because we flooded in Denham Springs in 2016 as well,” Yeats said. “I really didn’t have to deal with that right now on top of everything else going on in 2020.
“We were really fortunate. However, our neighbors not so much. Our neighbors behind us and to our left and right all got water. We spent Saturday cleaning up around our property and also helped out some of our neighbors with whatever they needed.”
Hurricane Laura placed sociology junior Tanner Aucoin in a difficult position in late August, as he had to take care of his younger brothers. His parents–who are both fire marshals–were deployed to the affected areas in southwest Louisiana.
Now, Aucoin has found himself in the same situation because of Hurricane Delta; his father was deployed to Lafayette and may be deployed to Lake Charles again. Aucoin is staying with his grandparents and brothers and is struggling to take care of the other members of his family while balancing schoolwork. Still, he said he can’t imagine how difficult it has been for everyone who lost their homes.
“I’m lucky enough to have somewhere to be stressed out and annoyed with A/C and electricity,” Aucoin said. “When I get angry about the situation I try to think about others. It helps bring me down to earth.
“Whenever you drive through Lake Charles and see everyone’s homes with tarps and then you drive through after Delta and see all those tarps ripped off, and the city left in disaster once more, you have to think about all those families even less fortunate than mine. There’s people that are living in the Walmart parking lot, living in tents, living in their front yard because they don’t have anywhere to go.”