Entergy is proud to support programing on LPB and greener practices that preserve Louisiana.

The goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth B Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.

Hi, everybody, I'm Kara St. Cyr.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone, I'm joining you tonight from the LPB Studios in Baton Rouge.

And also a very happy Thanksgiving to you, Andre.

And happy Thanksgiving to you too, Kara.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

I'm Andre Moreau.

For this half hour, we're bringing you this broadcast from Grand Isle, which is just opening up to try to begin the process of recovery after Hurricane Ida.

It's going to be a long, long recovery for the people here.

I'm actually standing at the location that I believe to be where our family camp was.

It was wiped away, owned by my sister and her husband.

But this is all that remains of it.

We're going to talk to the mayor of Grand Isle, his hopes for the future of the island and also some other people with some different ideas about what it will take to bring this island back.

It's the last inhabited barrier island in Louisiana.

It's a very important place in the state.

Important in the entire ecosystem for Louisiana.

For now, though, let me send it back to care in the studio.

We'll have much more with Andre this evening.

But before we take you back to Grand Isle, some updates on the COVID front.

Vaccination rates have improved slightly, with about 48% of the state fully vaccinated.

We continue to have one of the lowest COVID hospitalization counts in the country despite the state's low vaccination rate, and experts recommend that getting those booster shots can help keep cases and hospitalizations down.

Right now, anyone that's fully vaccinated and over the age of 18 is eligible for that booster.

Just make sure it's been six months since your last dose of Moderna or Pfizer.

And if you got the one dose of Johnson and Johnson, you can get that booster as early as two months after your final shot.

And now to other news, making headlines across the state nearly 15 months after Hurricane Laura struck Lake Charles and southwest Louisiana will finally see housing repair and rebuilding programs.

The state is allocating $11.3 million in repair and rebuilding for Lake Charles, while it waits for hundreds of millions of promised federal aid to arrive.

Federal housing and disaster recovery money will finance it.

Most of this will help low to moderate income households, with grants capped at $50,000 per homeowner.

Landlords of low to moderate rentals will also get essential help.

Car travel is costing much more as the price of gas soars, says unleaded in our state average is about $3.12 a gallon , while the national average is $3.40 to try and keep costs from going even higher.

President Joe Biden is ordering 50 million barrels of crude from the Petroleum Strategic Reserve by mid to late December.

More gas will be available.

More policing is coming to Louisiana for cities in the state's southeast.

Communities will receive a portion of 139 million dollar federal grant to hire new law enforcement personnel.

New Orleans is among one of the four cities receiving the grant money.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in New Orleans wrote in a news release that the city would receive $7.2 million.

Bogalusa is in line for more than 290,000, while tangible was set for 125,000.

Terrebonne Parish consolidated government was awarded $500,000.

The funding is coming from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The Pearl River Map Turtle, only found in Mississippi and Louisiana, will soon be listed as a threatened species by the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service.

The regional director of the agency said the turtle is at risk and needs our help.

The U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service is seeking grant money to help protect the species from extinction.

You're looking at what's part of this part of the burrito levee system in Grand Isle.

Part of it has held up very well.

Parts of it like this?

Not well at all.

David Campbell, the longtime mayor of Grand Isle, tells us why the levee failed in some of these areas and why it didn't.

And some other areas we got in the car drove around the island with him.

He pointed out some of the aspects of it, talked about some of the things they're doing, and all of it you'll find very interesting.

Hurricane recovery three months after IDA, a year after the New York Times in 2020 listed Grand Isle as one of the places to go.

A sort of global bucket list coming in at number 19 among 52 destinations around the world, ranking ahead of the Bahamas ahead of Glacier National Park in Montana.

Does a place appear more hauntingly beautiful when you know it's disappearing?

The article asks only about six miles long and not even a mile wide.

This sliver of sand and earth has a heavy burden.

Louisiana's only inhabited barrier island serves as a literal buffer to destructive hurricane forces for inland Homa and New Orleans.

The Times article urges Now is the time to go.

In the early 1800s, pirates like Jean Lafitte frequented Grand Isle becoming part of its Rome.

Anderson's history also captured in novels and in movies.

It's fishing and birdwatching, are treasures still intact because Grand Isle has managed to endure, it still hasn't met the one storm that would be its end like Last Island to the West, a 24 mile long, 19th century playground for Louisiana's elite.

The Great Storm of 1856 ended all that, erasing every hotel, casino and home 200 lies.

And the island itself leaving it submerged and in pieces.

The 1893 Cheniere coming out a hurricane dealt the same fate to what was a bustling fishing village just northwest of Grand Isle.

2000 people died.

This damaged home was the only thing left standing.

What was was never again terrible.

David Cardwell has been Grand Isle mayor for 24 years.

You're looking at about 16,000 poles put in.

He tells me the lights are back on for almost everybody, and all these power poles and lines got an upgrade from all those Ida took out.

He's showing me around pointing out damage.

It's a routine he knows well.

He grew up in politics.

His father was mayor in 1965, when American Betsy.

Yet you know you want to people all day rode it.

You know, all my life and all of my family and all my friends are all born and raised here.

Every mile counts wherever as this storm passes.

Yes.

So in the meantime, you look at it or, you know, the devastation is on a western in, well, the red, but it's closer to Port Fourchon, which if you look at it, the storm dives.

Don't pass anyone.

Once it was straight north and all the neighboring parishes, terrible Lafourche and Saint Charles, all of us to the right really got hit hard.

It was 28 on it.

Places that got heavy damage.

But it was 700 of that was destroyed.

And then when FEMA came in, what ability specters?

You know, I just make sure to make it right.

If a couple comes in and you got 50 to 55, 60%, go back and look at it.

Remember, as their homes, how are they doing with people here and people getting the help that they needed?

It all depends, you know, like dealing with FEMA, you know, is people want it.

They want something they want.

They want to fill out the paperwork.

The problem is you deal with one and you get denied and, you know, doing this for 40 years experience with FEMA it I call the federal emergency missing in action sometimes.

But in the meantime, some of it's good.

But to tell you people, you denied it when you lost everything, you can't afford insurance or if you go to insurance, they don't believe you can go back to FEMA.

So I mean, people coming up to me and said, Listen, this is somebody good.

You got to go to four to five times.

Don't give up all you tell the truth.

Don't give up.

And I said, it's going to come.

They're going to get aggravated and then they're going to get a shot at which the mayor's biggest concern for almost 15 hundred full time residents is running water.

I'm doing everything I can.

Let me say, are we coming in and doing everything we can?

But if you don't bring running water, you people are not coming back.

You need water.

The first thing you do in the morning is brush your teeth, water, bathroom, whatever you had to do.

You got to have water.

Stay clean.

Even in the most ideal of times, getting drinking water to Grand Isle is a chore.

Ida's fury disrupted a pipeline that carries it.

Carbondale is working to reconnect it until full repairs are made now.

When a storm came at unburied and did like a snake and it just went out like a hose pipe going out the marsh.

Right?

So right now, we could find the rest of it.

So we came up with new pipe, but it took quite a few days to put it together.

This line is tapped into Lafourche Parish goes down and has to now right now.

We just put it in last night and today we open a valve and it's coming all the way from Port Fourchon and is coming this way, and we're going to push it in and we're gonna test all the lines and we're going to put a pump across the bridge, try to put it together.

We see the mayor's own home and damage located where that village of Cheniere coming out of was.

Then we cross the bridge back to Grand Isle to see what Ida did to the Marino Levee.

This is something new that I've experienced.

It was so powerful the hurricane that it came over 50 foot waves and it just dug into this side and it just pushed the sand all the way across the street.

Yes.

So that's something that's different.

But if you look to the far right, you're going to see the rocks that's working over there.

Yep, that's that's where we just put five segments and we ask the federal government to come in and put 32 more later and put continue air for $50 million.

You could turn around and save a closing all the way to the state port.

But the main concern right now is I call this little Italy.

It's, you know, you can come in little canal and we call a little Italy in the meantime.

We're going to take the dirt bag and try to fill it back up.

We told the gore and I'm a child on television.

Any media get on if you think you're coming back to Grant, I'll just put saying, don't come because I don't have to go.

We don't have to go and lobby every six months to knock on the senator's door and say, Congressman, Senator, we need this.

Why don't you fix it, right?

Well, I could go focus on another project drainage pumps, whatever work about people.

In the meantime, we think we got him now.

The plans talking with the governor now with his engineering, with chip client with CBRE.

Were you close with him and his team?

The governor said the plans that we come up with, they do have rocks in.

It is we're working with the corps, we're going to submit it.

But I did let the governor notary it and let know that the Corps of Engineers, if you don't, if you don't have no practical plan, don't come because we're tired of just just put in three packs of sugar on a table.

Throwing a glass of water every morning is washed away and I do the right thing.

We spend a lot of money for nothing.

And I don't want the people out there.

I don't want to change it at all.

Commodore was always a town of Grand Isle.

They need to move away.

No, it's worth saving.

There's no crime.

You see people rebuilding.

Sounds good.

Oh, there's one grain of sand.

Yeah, to plant American flag, we'll stay strong.

We're not going away as.

Back from Grand Isle with you now, and a lot of people say when you see damage like this and that repeats itself, why would anybody live here?

Why even worry about keeping Grand Isle going well?

All you have to do is listen to a guy who's lived here his entire life, went to college, came back and ran the school here.

And then that gives you an idea of why Grand Isle, once it's in your system, hidden, never let you go.

What is it about Grand Isle?

It's a great place to have grown up.

Richard Augustine is 70 and the place he loves most in the world is fighting to recover from one of the worst hurricanes it's ever seen.

But even the hardship and loss of right now doesn't damn rich memories of the island paradise.

He's called home his entire life as a child.

I had a flat bottomed boat that we would put off right back here and go back four miles to the bay in the bay and just and just two or four hours.

And then when we got old enough to duck on, we would or those boats out to adopt an island back there that had a pond of some kind or another and we would got ducks.

Some of the main wheels that we had from our parents were when the streetlights started to flicker.

You'd better be on your way home.

Yes, and that's a true story.

I'm very we talked with Richard across the street from where he lives now, in the yard of the house where he grew up, which is almost adjacent to one of the oldest buildings on the island.

It was the main store of Grand Isle.

Run by his family and his kids, we worked in the store, a general, this general store.

And but it's mostly noted for from the old folks for being a the first post office on Grand Isle.

And the building, this part of the building is about 175 years old.

Could you describe somewhere in there and it's lasted all these storms?

Only college took him off the island, but he returned.

I came back and 7475 and was a teacher for about 14 years and then I became principal for 27 after that.

And I retired just a few years back, four or five years ago.

Keep in mind all he has seen from hurricanes to oil spills to the battle to keep Grand Isle above water.

He's seen a massive loss of land, which for decades has been a series of warnings for Louisiana, not only here, but any place on the bay side.

It's just not there anymore.

And my belief is that.

It's if they don't take care of Grand Isle and the rest of the barrier islands that New Orleans, the city of New Orleans, is going to wipe out the West Bank and all the city of New Orleans is going to be you can fish off your back porch.

That's my belief about the the man that's being torn away.

The elevation of Grand Isle is seven feet above sea level, and the effort to maintain that has ramped up in the past three decades.

The island is on the front lines of climate change and coastal land loss, facing one of the highest rates of relative sea level rise in the world.

Title flooding is increasing.

Most of the homes are raised up high on stilts with stricter building codes.

There is no formula to stop hurricanes, though, which are as much a part of Grand Dale's history as fishing.

You've seen many storms here before.

Yes, this one different than or as bad as the worst.

The one that I remember the most was Betsy.

Betsy was like 65.

We came in 65 September, the ninth in 65, and it was like we came back here and we had to boil our water.

We had probably three to four feet of water inside of this building.

And it tore the island up also.

But the island wasn't as populated then as it is now.

So, and the people that don't remember Betsy will say that this was a heck of a lot worse since 1877.

Tropical storms or hurricanes have repeatedly pummeled the island.

It feels the effects on average every two and a half years, a direct hit like powerful IDA every eight years.

What are your thoughts as you look at the future here?

I think Grand Isle will come back.

I believe that it will be better than it was before because we all learned from our mistakes.

I also believe that it'll take a while.

It's not going to happen overnight.

It's not going to happen in a year or two years or anything else.

It's going to take time to bring it back.

And I'm hoping I'm still living while it gets to that point that I believe it should be.

I just feel so sorry for all the people that were devastated, whether they were residents or whether they were tourists.

Are camp owners down here and this was their second home on their summer home.

I really feel bad for them too, because I see so many on Facebook that are saying it's time to go.

You know, we have a place to sell and stuff like that.

What's your word to them, though, and to everybody?

Don't lose faith.

Come back in and help us rebuild a better place than we had before and be a part of that.

Thank you.

You're welcome, sorry.

You very much.

You can hear all over Grand Isle, the sounds of machinery trying to rebuild things that have been damaged here.

Damage is extensive.

Long time recovery.

But I talked with Cynthia Lee saying she's the parish president for Jefferson Parish, and she has talked about an old idea, something that was done years years ago that could be a promising part of Randolph's future.

Take a listen.

Belinda Constant and how long have you been president?

I've been president since January of 2020, so not quite to you.

Oh okay, so January 2020 before COVID, LSU's just won the national championship.

You thinking this is going be a great place, right?

Yes.

Myself, the council were all fresh this morning and two months later with COVID.

We had the first case, first COVID case in Louisiana, in Jefferson Parish.

So and then the first of a series of hurricanes.

The most recent is what we're talking about here, either.

And what it's done to Grand Isle.

So and to in large part, just the road that goes up to where Ken are in that area is.

Yeah.

So a lot of damage, a lot of damage.

I mean, we kind of separate, you know, Jefferson Parish into the Upper Jefferson, which is protected by the hurricane levee protection system and then Lower Jefferson, which is outside the levee protection system in our coastal communities.

So, you know, Lafayette Barataria, Crown Point, Lower Lafayette and then, of course, Grand Isle.

Boy, what a big difference in very different stories on what happened during the storm.

Very different stories on the recovery.

Those areas that were protected by the levee system, the levee system really did well.

It absolutely held.

You know, that was a big investment that I say, the people in office and you know, the powers that be and the citizen groups who fought for that infrastructure post-Katrina, it paid off.

You know, in Jefferson Parish, we only lost one life during the storm and had that levee protection system not been in our most dense area.

It would have been much more property loss, perhaps much more human life loss.

Know so it did its job.

Now outside the levee protection system took a much bigger hit.

A much bigger punch from Hurricane Ida and Grand Isle is up and down the bayou.

As you come closer to Grand Isle from north to south, you see it, you see it.

You know, here we are in Grand Isle.

It looks different, you know, with the energy poles being straight and replaced.

So that has a different look.

And every time I come down here, you know, you can see the recovery.

It's a longer recovery process.

You talking about Grand Isle, you're talking about rebuilding whole systems, whether it's energy, whether it's water systems, whether it's gas systems, it's just a complete rebuild of the infrastructure systems.

I also represent the Lafitte area.

We have two strong mayors in both those communities.

Same storm.

Very different look.

Grand Isle looked like a bomb.

Went off very dry.

A lot of sand in Lafayette.

Bioterror Crown Point.

Very wet, very muddy.

Just a completely different look with, you know, a little bit different problems.

Grand Isle has been through this ever since.

There's been a Grand Isle and the islands are graphically is in a different place now than it was 5060 years ago.

But what does the future look like as we maybe learn from mistakes or have some technology that helps?

Are there things that will aid in a bounce back or coming back?

Grand Isle is a barrier island habitable that is just very vulnerable.

And so when we look at rebuilding this island, we have to rebuild in a more resilient way, in a more sustainable way, understanding how vulnerable we will continue to be.

But but the beauty about Grand Isle, it's not just geographic location, it is a culture and it's a way of life and its people in a generation of families that have been here.

And also, you have residents, but also it's a coastal community and it's a tourist spot.

You know, people love to spend summers here and have second homes here, so there's a lot there.

But we can see that the more modern development in the more modern home construction fared much better than many of the older homes.

And when we build back, we will certainly build back stronger and we're fighting for, you know, the protection system, you know, in terms of putting back the rocks and building the barriers.

And, you know, our Bourita levees, we're fighting to build that back stronger and this have done pretty well.

But at the same time, always vulnerable.

But the rocks I've heard time and time again, people are really touting the rocks.

The area that was protected by the rocks did better, and the rocks helped build the land back because, you know, the sediment goes over the rocks and it kind of stays there.

So it serves a dual purpose in protecting the actual levee, but also in terms of, you know, supplementing the land right there.

So we'll fix all that and fight for our way back of life.

But it is a long road to recovery.

We, you know, Grand Isle is has water supply to it from a 30 mile pipeline from Barataria.

And so we've been working very hard to get that water line back in place.

But we have grand vision for the future of Grand Isle, any that you want to share.

Well, absolutely.

You know, we've always.

Come to Grand Isle by car.

And it's a two hour, two and a half hour drive, depending on traffic, but our teams now because we're coming here so often have been going by boat and it's a beautiful boat ride.

And so when you can connect Grand Isle to the Greater New Orleans area and to operate Jefferson by, you know, a half hour drive to live feed in a half hour boat ride to Grand Isle.

All of a sudden, you know it changes tourism for Jefferson Parish.

It is a game changer for us.

And you can take a trip, you know, out of state.

People can take a trip to New Orleans and get that traditional trip with Bourbon Street and great restaurants, and then also have a beach trip as part of that.

And it really it does change it.

So it would be its own economy.

You could put the fishermen back to work, just imagine bed and breakfasts and condos here.

And, you know, staying in a bed and breakfast in Lafitte and taking a ferry to Grand Isle and spending the day and going back or vice versa, staying on Grand Isle.

And, you know, so we're going to build back with bike trails and golf carts and have a real coastal community and it's going to be all new.

You know, it's interesting, too, and that's historically what people did here because boats went out to last island and boats ferry to Grand Isle and different places back in the late 1800s.

Early 1900s.

That was the mode of transportation.

There weren't the roads and cars at the time, so it's kind of like going back comes back around again.

Yeah, to what work then?

And again, you miss a day trip, you know?

I mean, most people do that, but that's it.

It could be a beautiful day trip and it, you know, we all vacation in Florida.

A lot of us from here, we vacations or it's that easy ride, but we can start vacationing here in our own parish.

one other major important thing about Grand Isle being the only inhabited barrier is that it is a protection for what it is, and it's and people need to understand that somebody takes the first punch.

And if you don't have Grand Isle, then you know, we take the punch further up north.

And so you know you, you have to protect, you know, it's our culture and it's our history, but it serves a real purpose for us as well operationally in terms of, you know, storm protection.

Everyone, that's our show for this week.

Remember, you can watch anything LPB wherever you are with our LPB PBS app.

The download is free from your App Store.

You can watch LPB News and Public Affairs shows, as well as other Louisiana programs.

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Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

I'm Andre Mora with a special broadcast Peril in Paradise: Grand Isle.

Thanks for watching.

Until next time, that's the state we're in.

Entergy is proud to support programing on LPB and greener practices that preserve Louisiana.

The goal of our environmental and sustainability initiatives really is to ensure that our kids and future generations can be left with a cleaner planet.

Additional support provided by the Fred Bea and Ruth B Ziegler Foundation and the Ziegler Art Museum located in Jennings City Hall.

The museum focuses on emerging Louisiana artists and is an historical and cultural center for Southwest Louisiana and the Foundation for Excellence in Louisiana Public Broadcasting.

With support from viewers like you.