"The U.S. Forgot Lake Charles, And It Could Happen Again Elsewhere"

"Two years after Hurricane Laura, federal aid to help with long-term rebuilding still has not arrived"

"LAKE CHARLES — Hilda Brown ambled down a wooden walkway with the help of a cane and gingerly took a seat at a table between her badly damaged house and a FEMA trailer. It had been more than a year and a half since Hurricane Laura, but the then-64-year-old widow still didn’t know where to turn.

She didn’t have the money to finish repairs on the home, which she couldn’t afford to insure. The Federal Emergency Management Agency had lent her the trailer as a temporary solution, but the deadline to return it was approaching, and she was facing the possibility of being forced to pay steep rent to keep living in it.

“It’s been hard,” Brown, who lives on Social Security benefits, told The Times-Picayune | The Advocate in April. “Everything is just bam, bam, one thing after another.”

Since Laura struck in August 2020, Lake Charles, a small city in Louisiana’s industrial southwestern corner, has served to spotlight the shortcomings in America’s system for helping communities rebuild in the wake of catastrophe."

Mike Smith reports for Nola.com September 18, 2022.

Source: Nola.com, 09/19/2022