Forgotten but Not Gone: Buras, Louisiana

Source: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081007L.shtml

Forgotten but Not Gone: Buras, Louisiana
By Charles E. Anderson
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

Friday 10 August 2007

Collapsed water tower in Buras, Louisiana, October 2005 after the storm. (Photo: http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ima)

I drive south, leaving the city as the twilight gathers. I cross the bridge into Plaquemines Parish, thinking briefly of the sheriff who threatened to shoot New Orleans residents as they attempted this journey during the flood. After nearly forty-five minutes, I am away from the city and past the bedroom communities. I drive past oil refineries, gas pipelines and pumping stations. I drive past family farms, old plantations and small coastal towns. From a bridge, I can see the oil platforms that dot the coastline in the Gulf of Mexico. The farther into the rural landscape I get, the more noticeable the hurricane damage becomes. Near the end of Highway 23, I turn left on onto the little-regarded Parish Route 11. As I approach the town of Buras, I enter the war zone. The hurricane damage is evident even in the dark. I drive past vacant buildings, still standing but only skeletons of what they used to be.

"Welcome to the Bottom of the World"

About halfway down PR 11, I find the old YMCA building. Once the center of recreation for nearly 3,000 residents, the badly damaged industrial frame building for a time housed the headquarters of Emergency Communities. Light spews from the open door as I approach, and at first I think that the building survived the storm unscathed. Yet, it turns out to be little more than a framework of metal girders and a roof; the sides and back of the building are open. Two guitarists and a fiddle player perform sad bluegrass music for a mixture of town residents and tired volunteers. The ad-hoc community center boasts a lending library, an internet café, a free Laundromat, a play area for children and a soup kitchen that turns out dozens of meals per day for residents and volunteers alike. I have only been in the community center for a few moments when a burly fisherman approaches me, reaching out one of his beefy hands. "Welcome to the bottom of the world," he booms in a playful, yet gruff voice. "Nobody comes down here. The money stops at the parish line. The government thinks we're not important enough, but we're staying."

Going Home Again

Pete Plisko of the Plaquemines Parish Development Committee. (Photo: Charles E. Anderson)

By nine o'clock in the morning, volunteers are busy helping 41-year-old town resident Pete Plisko gut the old Buras Pharmacy. "This is going to be the site of the new laundry facility and dining hall," he says. Since this was written, Emergency Communities has closed its doors. However, Plisko is not discouraged by the organization's departure. In, fact, he views it as progress, and the announcement spurred him to form a committee of town residents called People for Plaquemines to take over where Emergency Communities left off. "You have to understand," he tells me as we watch a team pulling rotten ceiling tiles out of the damaged building, "Emergency Communities was only as good as the Red Cross, and the Red Cross was only as good as FEMA and the other agencies. FEMA came in and gave people money. Emergency Communities came in and gave people three meals a day, but at the end of the day, they had to leave and we have to live here. If we don't get people back into their houses, we're nowhere." Plisko says that the aim of his committee is to help people rebuild their homes. Materials are scarce, however, and it is 150 miles to the nearest hardware store.

The damage caused by the storm is minimal in comparison to the flooding caused by a 35-foot-high storm surge that broke the flood gates at the end of the levee system. The floodwaters sat trapped between the levees of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico for several weeks.

On the edge of town sits Thomas Bondi's home. With a look of quiet desperation, he explains how his home was filled from floor to ceiling with mud. The 52-year-old disabled fisherman worked by himself to remove the mud while commuting from Alabama. As he shows me through the house, his chest swells with pride as he tells me, "A disabled man did all this." The mud is gone, the belongings of his family have long been discarded, the windows rehung and the drywall torn out to reveal the joists that support the house. Now, with the help of Plisko, he will rewire the house and a team of volunteers may help rehang the drywall. Bondi evacuated from Buras with his wife, an adult who has cerebral palsy. "We couldn't stay in Alabama because my son gets health services from the state."

Indeed, the landscape of Buras appears forever changed. Vacant lots mark the area where houses once stood, and shattered business sit on the side of the road. Yet, the town is slowly recovering. "It's the young folks who need to reinvigorate this community," says Kevin Barrois, 51, an eighth-generation town native. "The older people who live here lost everything in Hurricanes Betsy and Camille. There were thirty years between the hurricanes of the '60s and Hurricane Katrina. Now there just aren't the hospitals, stores and other infrastructure to support our elderly citizens."

Thomas Bondi's shotgun-style home in Buras, Louisiana. (Photo: Charles E. Anderson)

A Pleasure Doing Business

Alice and Woody's restaurant turns a brisk business at lunchtime. Contractors, state employees and town residents alike dine on Po'Boys and hamburgers, drink cold soda pop and munch on French fries. Conversation is about fishing, sports and family. Were the dining area not under an open-air awning on the foundation of the original restaurant, it would seem almost as though nothing had changed.

In August 2005, restaurateur Doug Holloway, 58, who inherited Alice and Woody's from his parents in 1991, reopened the restaurant from a lunch trailer.

A gas station, two bars and a combination hardware and grocery store are operating in Buras.

In the late afternoon, Byron and Kelly Marinovich are assembling a garden cart in front of their restaurant and bar, The Black Velvet. The Marinovich family was one of the first to return to Buras, living in a tent while waiting for their FEMA trailer to be approved.

Doug Holloway prepares Jambalaya in the kitchen of his restaurant before the Friday lunch rush. (Photo: Charles E. Anderson)

"Before the storm, I owned several businesses and was four months from having everything paid off. I lost $1.2 million worth of property in the storm," Byron says. He and Kelly, his wife of ten years, are already rebuilding their home and their business. Their business, Black Velvet, is currently based in a trailer, serving beer and fried seafood to local fishermen and contractors. Behind the trailer sits a two-story, steel-framed building. The ground floor will house an oyster bar and the second floor will be the family's living quarters.

Byron was a staunch Republican supporter before the storm, but now he decries politicians of both parties as incompetent. "I expected that I would have something to fall back on. But the government just wasn't there to help us."

A few doors down, Patty and Austin Williams have just stopped working for the evening. The Williamses own the oldest standing building in town, built as a hotel in 1937. Formerly the Yours, Mine and Ours Thrift Shop, they are now remodeling the old store into a bed and breakfast.

"There just aren't enough people left in town to support a thrift shop," says Patty.

"We're Gonna Make It"

However, the new Buras is attempting to attract tourists with its picturesque views of the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico, as well as a reputation for excellent fishing. In the late evening, a cruise ship navigates up the Mississippi River toward New Orleans, looking like a giant floating city. Plisko and others gather in the parking lot of Emergency Communities and watch it pass.

"This is home," says Plisko. "Why would I want to live anywhere else?"

Another resident sums it up another way, "My daddy always said, 'Winners never quit and quitters never win.' We're not quitters. We're gonna make it."

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Charles E. Anderson's writings have been published by Truthout, Common Dreams and The Huffington Post. He lives in Boone, North Carolina where he is a junior at Appalachian State University. He can be contacted through his web site: www.charleseanderson.com.