After Hurricane Ida I figured the rest of my neighborhood in downtown Hammond, Louisiana wasn’t hit too hard since where I could see from my street looked like just a lot of limbs fell and none on the houses. I tend to go the same direction every time I leave the house so that’s what I always saw, not much.
WELL, I took a wrong turn on my way home Saturday and the damage I saw on those streets looked like the neighborhood blew up. The church across the street looked fine from my house but didn’t look so perfect from those streets. Their sign blew away and a huge tree uprooted.
ALL OF THESE IMAGES CAN BE CLICKED ON TO ENLARGE
What’s interesting to me is that three weeks after the hurricane a lot of the damage looks neat. The trees have been removed from the houses and cars they crushed and are cut up neatly with a lot of the limbs already taken away. A lot of the “mess” has been raked and cleaned up so the “mess” looks “neat” right now. But only at some houses.
One house with a lot of huge trees down and extensive damage to their home didn’t look terribly neat, but the work I saw going on there showed improvements finally starting there.
Around another corner, I came across a huge tree cut up and two crushed cars in the driveway. Two men were sitting outside, Cedrick and Sam. I stopped in the middle of the street, because well, I could. We had a nice visit and they let me take pictures of the crushed cars and trees up close. I wanted to cry seeing that damage, especially to the cars. They said that right after the hurricane the trees that had fallen were everywhere and you couldn’t see the street, houses, or cars. I guess me staying home and then hightailing it to Arkansas with Chip stopped me from seeing all that.
I passed by that house yesterday and the trees were all removed. Looked much better though the crushed cars are still there.
I am going to go back and check on Cedric and Sam once things get back to normal again. Might even set a spell and visit again!
A little bit more of the damage around here can be seen in these photos. Since the Hurricane was 5 weeks ago all the downed trees have died and are not nearly as large looking as they were.
Some of it is cleared up now. There remains a lot of piles of trees and debris. We’re just one town amongst all those in Southern Louisiana affected by Hurricane Ida. The disposal trucks, even with many brought in from other states, are stretched thin since every town has some level of damage. Regular trash is just now starting to get caught up and that’s apart from hurricane damage debris and trees. I look forward to one day sharing the cleaned up versions of my little town, Hammond America!
My internet has gone out, come back and on and on several times since it first came back a week ago. Today it’s back so I put this together. I plan to get back to writing my weekly posts about my life once I catch up on Hurricane Ida posts. Having air conditioning, internet, and television all at once feels like I am being pampered! It’s nice to have my life mostly back to normal. Please keep praying for all those who won’t know normal for a long long time.
Later ya’ll! Rosalyn
BECAUSE HE LIVES 