Posted on 09/08/2005 10:41:41 AM PDT by BurbankKarl
Empire and 10 other towns spread over 57 miles are now under 10 feet of water.
"They're gone. They don't exist anymore," Deputy Sheriff Arceneaux said Wednesday as he guided a Reno skiff over oil-fouled waters — the only way into Empire and points south. His journey took him by his former trailer, which he couldn't see because it was submerged in churning floodwaters.
This string of fishing and oil towns was the first inhabited area on the Gulf Coast to be hit by Hurricane Katrina. The parish took the full brunt of the storm, with thousands of homes and businesses either flooded or obliterated by high winds or storm surge.
Up and down Highway 23, the narrow ribbon of asphalt that winds through the bayous, shards of brick and frame houses litter the flat countryside.
Mattresses and curtains and trousers are strung in the limbs of the few surviving trees. Fishing and pleasure boats are stacked three high in the swamps. Massive barges were dumped atop levees that were overwhelmed by the storm.
"We got boats in trees down here," said Darryl Couvillion, a contractor who was piloting his boat to Empire, about 60 miles from New Orleans, on Wednesday to check on the town's damaged canal locks.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Didn't the eye pass directly over a little town called Ruxtun...or something like that?
Or is it the fault of people who diverted the Mississippi? At any rate, Before we help Deputy Sheriff Arceneaux we need to know whose fault it is.
towns built on a delta mud flat - That is to be expected that they would be erased.
I assume that those that lived here were mostly fishermen who usually know enough about the sea to get far away from an approaching storm. Unlike others.
This is the second time that have read a newspaper story with the word "village" in the title. Since when do we have villages? These journalists are either nitwits or they figure if they begin calling towns villages it will be the multicultural name for what were once called towns. Is anyone noticing this.
Really? I grew up in the Village of Malverne (NY).
Nothing wrong with the word "village." It means, in population and development terms, something smaller than a town and with fewer services. We also have "hamlets" in the US.
Generally, people may refer to them all as towns in everyday speech, but there is a difference between them.
"This is the second time that have read a newspaper story with the word "village" in the title. Since when do we have villages?"
Its definitely a regional term.
As N.O. calls counties parishes though there is no longer a religious connotation.
In some places every town is a "city".
Yep, like the new term ...
The "village" of New Orleans ;)
There were no incorporated towns in Plaquemines Parish. Some of those places could have been accurately described as fishing villages.
Click the link below for a google search of "Village of"
You'll find lots of small towns that classify themselves as villages...
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-32,GGLD:en&q=%22Village+of%22
I agree. I'm waiting for mention of what happened to the "indigenous peoples" and "village elders" after the great floods came. Did the "village healer" survive?
Weird.
We'll now I feel stupid. I just always thought villages were in third world countries and not here in the U.S.
LOL!
"We'll now I feel stupid. I just always thought villages were in third world countries and not here in the U.S."
Oh, well....live and learn, I guess...
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