News, Sports and Entertainment for St. Martin Parish, La.

Baja St. Martin

by Linda Cooke

It is so very nice to see the sun shining each morning and at least most of each day with no rain. But it must be particularly hard for someone to enjoy these blessings when their house is still full of water, they have no electricity and most of their belongings have been ruined.
We here in Lower St. Martin are so very lucky. Despite our extremely low elevation, nobody here flooded or even came close. Oh, a few yards had standing water when the heaviest rains were falling, and the sewer lift stations filled with run-off and weren’t pumping quite efficiently, but that’s pretty much over now.
I have some camper neighbors whose home in St. Amant flooded so they moved to their camp here in Belle River. Just getting here was an ordeal apparently, losing one truck in the water, no power for freezers and refrigerators, bringing food, clothes, pets, valuables, expensive tools, et al. Not only what they might immediately need but worried about looting back home. And they were lucky to have another place to go rather than to a shelter.
It might be argued that they should have evacuated sooner, but I sympathize because I well recall being practically the only occupants in all of Belle River and Pierre Part once when everyone else had left. We were OK, but I know it was foolish to stay. That was probably back in l992 or ’93, maybe before. We have never, ever left our home for a hurricane even when that home was a tent in the spillway.
You know, I can remember crouching on the bedroom floor with my dog as Hurricane Andrew passed. When the wind was howling and things were banging outside, and I was so afraid it was my roof making all that noise, (it wasn’t) all I could think of was my books, the TV, radio, pictures, washing machine and if they all got blown into the river what would I do???
I don’t think I even thought about being hurt or killed. I didn’t have any children here then or I hope they would have been first in my worries. I spent Hurricane Betsey in a small boat with my husband, a dog, a less than year old baby and me and everything I then owned. Of course, I was young and apparently really stupid then!!! Didn’t get hurt then either.
I listened to an NPR person interviewing a woman from Baton Rouge and the guy asked her why she thought so many places had flooded. I’m not sure I caught her response but it was something to do with building houses up higher, maybe a few other things. I thought about that question later and my answer would have been to clean out the rivers which should drain the towns.
Of course, when you get a foot or more of rain in a day things are going to flood, but its getting that water out quicker that seems to me to be critical. I realize that’s a simplistic solution and certainly only one, but if you drain all that rain water into deeper rivers quickly it would help.
I’ve been watching the Olympics and was heartbroken to watch the women’s beach volleyball team lose to Brazil. Walsh and Ross are so great, but those two Brazilian women were amazing. I do love to see Usain Bolt run! And Michael Phelps swim!
I am so totally non-competitive; maybe that’s why I have such admiration for these athletes. The hours and years they’ve trained to be so good. Such devotion. Such focus! Truly incredible. Not counting the foolishness of Ryan Lochte, of course!
Teche News’ Lower St. Martin correspondent, Linda Cooke, can be e-mailed at lindacooke1939@gmail.com.

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