Residents of the Louisiana city are still recovering from the hurricanes of 2020

LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) — Every other day, Lois Malvo waits for her son to fetch six buckets of water from a faucet in the backyard. He then bathes his 78-year-old mother using water heated on the stove and washes her with a spray pump he bought online.

It’s been four years since Hurricanes Laura and Delta decimated Lake Charles in southwest Louisiana, and Malvo is still without plumbing. Unable to afford repairs without federal funds he fears will never arrive, Malvo lives in a run-down house where the floor sags and wires come out of the ceiling.

In the midst of peak hurricane season, recovery continues apace in a community the Weather Channel once called “America’s most weather-hit city.”

Some residents of Lake Charles, a predominantly black city where a fifth of the population lives in poverty, are still stuck in similar conditions. They fear they have slipped through the cracks, even though some have been approved for federal funds, but are approaching a deadline to close their award or risk losing it.

Some homeowners are caught in legal limbo with insurance companies they say grossly understated their claims. And others are still homeless after hurricanes destroyed apartment complexes and neighborhoods.

“It’s very, very frustrating to live like this,” Malvo said. “Sometimes I get so frustrated I just want to give up.”

Lake Charles State

Hurricane Laura tore through Lake Charles in August 2020 as one of the most powerful storms to hit Louisiana. Six weeks later, Hurricane Delta followed the same destructive path.

Evacuees returned home from the storms to catastrophic damage.

The hurricanes caused an estimated $22 billion in damage across the U.S., according to the National Hurricane Center, with Louisiana taking the brunt of the hit. Delta and Laura were also accused of causing 49 direct deaths nationally and in the Caribbean.

Today there are signs of rebuilding and growth in parts of Lake Charles. But other areas seem frozen in time. Students learn in modular classrooms outside a still unusable high school. A 22-story office building, once a city icon, remains an abandoned hope and is slated for demolition. FEMA-issued blue tarps covering damaged roofs disintegrated into tatters.

Federal funding delays

Residents have waited years for substantial federal funding as Congress dealt with another crisis: the COVID-19 pandemic.

It wasn’t until 2022 — a year and a half of struggle later and months after Louisiana faced multiple disasters, flash floods and Hurricane Ida that battered communities along Louisiana’s southeast coast — that financial aid was announced after which the homeowners wanted.

Of this, $1 billion was allocated to Louisiana Restore; the state program responsible for distributing federal funds to homeowners affected by natural disasters. More than 8,000 owners affected by Laura and Delta have taken the first step to qualify. About 60 percent were invited to apply based on factors such as the extent of damage to their home, according to Restore’s assessments.

Tasha Guidry organized grassroots efforts, helping dozens of people qualify for Restoration.

Guidry’s home was rebuilt by Restore, but like other residents interviewed by The Associated Press, she admitted it was a grueling process.

“A lot of our people quit because they didn’t understand how to navigate the process,” she said.

Restore received 3,935 requests from homeowners affected by Laura or Delta. About two-thirds received funding, totaling $201 million. So far, $91 million has been distributed among 1,444 owners. Another 1,400 were rejected, and several thousand were not approved to apply.

Another 440 homeowners approved for Restore funding have just two months left to close on their award or risk losing it.

Reasons for denial range from FEMA-assessed claims of less than $3,000, holding a certain level of insurance, homeowners not being able to account for previous recovery money they received, or lack of documentation.

In total, 80 percent of the program’s $1 billion fund was allocated to homeowners affected by hurricanes in 2020 or 2021. About $169 million in funds for affected residents was not allocated by the state.

Insurance woes

Terra Hillman lives in her backyard in a FEMA trailer she calls a “sardine can” while her damaged brick house rots.

The insurance company paid her about $30,000 despite the estimated $300,000 in damage to her home. And he got a notice that he was violating local ordinances by staying in the trailer.

“I don’t really know how much more I can take,” she said.

The hurricanes resulted in more than 200,000 residential property claims filed in Louisiana, according to data from the state Department of Insurance. Insurers have paid out at least $5 billion in claims to homeowners. According to a report by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Laura alone caused an estimated $17.5 billion in damage to Louisiana.

Residents and officials say insurance companies have made recovery difficult for Lake Charles. Some landlords have been forced into litigation to get fair offers. Others could not afford the time or cost of a court battle, settling for a fraction of what they believe they are owed.

As the claims mounted, a handful of companies filed for bankruptcy or fled Louisiana, shifting tens of thousands of claims to the state’s bailout program. Louisiana’s insurance crisis continues, with fewer companies doing business in the state, resulting in higher premiums.

The housing crisis

Hurricane damage has left a shortage of affordable housing. None of the city’s 463 public housing units are currently habitable, and hundreds of Section 8 homes have been lost, according to Ben Taylor, executive director of the Lake Charles Housing Authority.

Many, like Ramona Breaux and her two children, were forced to leave. Breaux, 60, went to live with relatives in Houston after her subsidized rental home burned down.

“I want to come home,” Breaux said.

The city’s population fell by about 6.2 percent from 2020 to 2023, the 12th largest decline in the nation, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Lake Charles Mayor Nic Hunter said the city is doing everything it can. New housing developments expected to be completed next year should leave the city with more rental units than it had before the storms.

Post-Hurricane Trauma

The hurricanes left residents dealing with trauma and anxiety.

Darleen Wesley and her family spent years living in a house with boarded-up windows and a leaky roof while they battled their insurer in court. They finally returned home after living in a backyard workshop during construction.

But her daughter panics when it thunders. Wesley tries not to think about what might happen when the next hurricane hits.

“And then I’m right back where I started,” she said. “How do I prepare for this again?”

Photo: A truck drives through floodwaters in a neighborhood in Lake Charles, Louisiana, Saturday, Oct. 10, 2020, after Hurricane Delta

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Catastrophe Natural disasters Hurricane Louisiana