Published: Sept. 17, 2021
By: Allison Kadlubar, LSU Tiger TV
BATON ROUGE — Lake Charles residents have been trudging through recovery from the catastrophic Category 4 storm Hurricane Laura for over a year.
“It was just like, this is unreal,” said LSU junior and Lake Charles native Meredith Owen. “It’s so-much-worse-than-I thought kind of thing.”
Owen is heartbroken every time she returns to her hometown as blue tarps still coat many homes and less than 13% of homes have begun the reconstruction process, according to the city.
“Our house still has a massive hole in the ceiling,” said Owen.
Just over a year after the destruction of Laura, another Category 4 storm pummeled the Gulf Coast, sparing southwest Louisiana but leaving southeast Louisiana in the eye of the storm.
“I really thought for a 2-hour window there, when the eye was over us, that we were not going to make it,” said LSU junior Dena Vial.
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