Coastal city took Hurricane Rita's best shot

Indianapolis Star reporter Tom Spalding and photographer Adriane Jaeckle are in Louisiana following Hoosiers responding to Hurricane Rita. 

CAMERON, La. -- A dead cow lay inside the sanctuary of a Baptist church. Entire homes were pulled off their foundations. One resident knelt in rubble and teared up behind sunglasses; his beloved dog was missing.

While some parts of the Gulf Coast are moving closer to normalcy, this city is a stark reminder that other areas still are in crisis. Hurricane Rita seems to have packed a smaller punch than Hurricane Katrina, the damage I've seen here is as bad or worse than anything I witnessed in Mississippi after Katrina.

Officially, the city of 1,965 -- which is about 40 miles south of the I-10/Lake Charles, La., corridor -- is closed because of hazards, like gas leaks and downed power lines. But local officials on Tuesday offered a few reporters and photographers a tour after floodwaters receded enough for some roads to reopen.

As he drove along the coastal Highway 27 that leads into Cameron, Louisiana State Police trooper John Robinson, 34, pointed around at former landmarks he now can identify only by memory.

"I'm speechless," Robinson said. "Some people who were evacuated are going to come home to nothing, to empty slabs. One of the worst-case scenarios that everyone talked about became a reality."

In Cameron, the courthouse is "probably the only thing that is salvageable" among hundreds of damaged homes and businesses, said Scott Trahan, 40, the Cameron police juror, a type of county commissioner.

Bobby Lande, 62, Cameron, arrived by boat then walked through ankle-deep water to try to inspect a family member's house. He recalled Hurricane Audrey, which killed 500 people when it roared ashore in the same Cameron Parish area in 1957.

"As devastating as this is, it's not as bad as Audrey, because I'm not picking up any bodies," Lande said.
John LeBlanc, 42, assistant director of the Cameron Parish office of emergency preparedness, said he hoped federal officials would provide the same relief here as in New Orleans.

"It's small town U.S.A., but we want the same support that New Orleans did," he said.