Katrina's effect on Chalmette - Bruce

Hurricane Katrina has affected Chalmette more than any other part of Louisiana. Chalmette was 100%, completely wiped out from the hurricane. People lost everything. Houses were knocked off the slabs, and everything was lost. Some of the firemen from the local fire station told us their stories of life after the storm, and it wasn't pretty. They were without power, and they had very limited amounts of water. Food was scarce, and they did what they had to do to survive. There wasn't much looting going on in Chalmette, because everything was underwater. They told us about how they have to bathe with bottles of water. They called it the"20 ounce shower." Many of the population did not return after the storm, actually about 50% . Most of the people who did not return had nothing to come back to, so they simply decided to start over somewhere else, where this tragedy could not happen again. The people who did come back are die-hard Chalmatians. Even if they had nothing, many of them came back because St. Bernard Parish was all that they knew. They lived and breathed Chalmette for their entire lives, and they would not let a "little water" force them to abandon their hometown forever.