We had a housefull for Christmas eve supper (the noon meal) and for Christmas dinner (lunch). The day before that I spent with my two sisters and their three girls. I got what I wanted for Christmas, a home and time with family. These days I get to spend more quality time with friends and family. Life is good!
We are ready for the holidays. The house is 99% complete. The bank account is cleaned out(thanks mostly to Mr. Chris Smith). There is fishing and shrimping to be done; throwing the castnet is interesting. I have also been renewing my interest in single action shooting (we have plenty of room for that sort of thing out here). There is Single Action Shooting Society group that meets at the local shooting range also.
The theft of our items have been solved. Nothing has been recovered.
We still have our home in Reno. I have been attempting to refinance. It seems that we started this back in April, though they say June. It is now December and the bank is still not finished with whatever it is that they have to do. The latest closing date is mid January. I can’t believe that it is taking this long. They have all of the information. Their latest request is for information that they had in their escrow account. I am spending days gathering information for them. It is a real pain. Lots of phone calls. My files have been passed through many hands. Requests are made. I run all over the countryside to gather paperwork. I send it in. Weeks pass and then additional requests are made.
Now the holidays are upon us. We have a birthday to celebrate, Christmas to celebrate. I get to see both of my step-sisters together the first time in thirty years. Mardi-Gras is just a few months away!
This will be rather short. In early November I returned to the area. I had two goals in mind. The first was to make further contact with the volunteer fire and EMS personnel of east Cameron Parish and supply them with clothing. My second goal was to work on cleaning up my own hurricane ravaged home.
I will start with my own property. I was lucky enough to have a nephew who had recently returned from two tours of duty in Iraq. Tray was looking to start up his own handyman business. It was perfect timing. I needed help in a bad way. My house had filled with over six feet of water during hurricane Rita. The water had left the house after the flood, but it left behind over two inches of mud. There were other problems as well. The house was almost off of its foundation.
We decided to start on the adjoining garage. It was a much smaller project. One-half of the roof had been blown off off by the storm and the “outdoor kitchen” portion of the building was torn up by the wind and water. There was also the everpresent mud problem.
For the first few days Tray and I gutted the garage/kitchen. We started by ripping out the cabinets, range, sink, and dishwasher. I found some five gallon buckets around the place and started to fill them with a mixture of mud and insulation. We filled up the truck and drove the half mile to the main road, where we dumped about twenty loads of trash before the place was clean enough to work. We worked from about 7:30 AM til’ 5. After that I stopped by Lowe’s and resupplied for the next day (it was a two hour trip to the hardware store).
In the end of two weeks we had completely rebuilt the garage and outdoor kitchen. All we needed were cabinets, appliances and new furniture.
For my other project I started with several phone calls. Cameron Parish was closed to outsiders so it was dificult to get in. I met with a volunteer who had made the effort to contact other volunteers who had lost their homes (to hurricane Rita) and collect their clothing sizes. We still had a few thousand dollars to spend. I wanted to at buy them warm (safe, water resistant and reflective) coats for the winter. As I write this that project is in the works. We are going to get them
For those of you visiting for the first time please scroll down and read the earlier stories of my trips to hurricane ravages southwest Louisiana first. Thank you!
Just before Christmas 2005, we once again returned to southwest Louisiana. It was a bittersweet trip. Had collected more fire department t-shirts and had purchased over two dozen reflective safety jackets for the firefighters of south Cameron Parish. I carried the t-shirts as my luggage allotment on my Southwest airline flight. The jackets were shipped with UPS. I purchased the jackets in Reno, at cost, through a friend.
Upon our arrival at “mamma’s” house (everybody has a mama in the south) I found several boxes of jackets on the porch. The next day I took a drive down to Cameron to meet up with my contact, Dorothy.
To get into lower Cameron Parish is no easy task. Cameron is still (three months later) under mandatory evacuation. Other than the road system, there is very little infrastructure in the parish. Electricity is mostly re-connected, water works some places, but there are very little sewer treatment systems.
The road into the area is guarded by members of “BlackWater” security. BlackWater is not you average security service. Most of their members have police or military experience. You must have a legitimate reason to pass these hombres.
The speed limit past this point is 45. If you go 46 you will be ticketed. The sheriff of Cameron Parish has this strictly enforced. This is the south.
I drove down past what is left of Creole. Creole is a settlement of about 1,500. From what I saw there is not one undamaged structure in this town. I turn right and head for the coast. I immediately pass an empty lot that was once my Farm Bureau insurance office; my agent has moved herself and her business to a trailer back at Boon’s Corner.
Things haven’t changed much in the three months since Rita came to visit. The bodies that floated away from their “final resting places” have been mostly accounted for.
The debris has been picked up from the road. The folks are still living out of the Parish. The only folks “living” in the south part of the parish are rescue workers. The homes are all either gone or badly damaged. As you drive the roads you see many houses that are not where they belong. During the storm they just up and floated somewhere else.
No rebuilding has commenced, three months after the storm.
I met up with Dorothy at Camp Cameron. I visited the yurt like tent that she, her husband and a dozen or so of her close friends were living in. It was real cozy. A dozen cots lined up on both sides of the outer walls. Each person had enough room to squeeze between his/her neighbor. There was enough room for a small suitcase at the end of each “bed”. It was tight.
I handed over my two boxes and headed out. I took the long way home. I traveled through the county seat, also called Cameron. The County office building still stood. It was built to take a storm. It was made of solid concrete.
I crossed the ferry and headed west, towards Holly Beach.
I arrived at what I thought was Holly Beach. It was Holly Beach, only I missed the first turn. There were no landmarks, no homes. There were only pilings sticking out of the sand and a road grid.
I am surprised at the lack of progress. I am equally surprised at the inequity of the aid. Areas that really don’t need much are well cared for; areas that need help aren’t getting any.
FEMA is a giant bureaucracy. Disaster services are manned by 1) people who want to help, 2) bureaucrats who don’t care 3) fill in here
Many FEMA disaster workers are retired folks. Some do a great job, some don’t. The ones who don’t do their jobs grind everything to a halt. The FEMA workers who do their jobs are very frustrated. There are folks who are still living in cars, lean-toos and tents. They have gotten almost zero help. This is America, the leader of the free nations. Why can’t these people get the aid that they need FEMA?
In my own experience (I lost my home here also). I called the FEMA phone line. I called at 5 AM as the phones are clogged all day. I answered 30 minutes worth of questions. I needed to “register my loss”. After that short interview I was told that, “the program says that you are not eligible for aid”. I wasn’t registering for any aid, I was registering the loss of my house.
FEMA did do a good job of hiring “contractors” to clean up the debris on the roads. The do not clean up the entire county. The do clean up the majority of the trash within about ten feet of the road. The problem that goes along with this is that some (a few) of the employees of these contractors have a problem differentiating between what is obviously trash and what are the remaining possessions of hurricane victims. My friend Ron caught two guys with a pickup load of his newly purchased lumber. He needed it moved anyway. I had two guys drive into my place, looking around. I went out to greet them. They had their windows up and almost ran me over. We grabbed their license number. As my place is a half mile off of the road there is no reason for them to have driven up my drive, unless they were casing my house. It would have been a good time to “shoot at a snake”, just to let them know that, ” we don’t cotton to this” in my neighborhood.
Why did my friend Phill and I do what we did? The frustration level that we experienced by trying to go through official channels was just too much. All we heard was, “don’t go”. We were told that FEMA was organizing aid and that they were going to do a good job. What we saw was quite the contrary. Like I stated above, there are a lot of folks doing a lot of good. There are a lot of folks taking advantage of their jobs and the situation also. We wanted to do good (within out means) without outside meddling. Looking back, it was a good decision. 
It has been over a year since I have written. The house on the bayou has been cleaned out, but it still sits in a condition of decay. I have a law suit filed against LA Citizens, like tens of thousands of others.
The house clean-out came as a result of numerous unwelcome visitors. There is no reason to leave anything there for them to steal. It’s just better that way. The house is an empty shell. The grass still grows and must be cut. It is hard to do when you must live so far away.
I got one bid for the lifting of the house to the desired sixteen feet. It came in at well over 0,000. For that I will get a wrecked house on a new foundation. Somehow, it just doesn’t seem worth it. The economics don’t add up.
I was promoted at work shortly after the storm. The hours are greater and the money is better. The hours make our time here in Reno more difficult.
But there’s hope. In just a few short years we will be moving down. We will have a place to live and the time to fix up the old place.
Hurricane Ike has now come and gone. I hope that the flood will have subsided enough so that someone can go and have a look at the Reon “camp” house. I know that I lost everything that was at ground level, including my shop. Everyone who I know is safe, though rattled. There was a lot of water that came in, more than hurricane Rita. I hope that everyone survives, but I know better.
What is happening with this world? There was a hurricane in the area around 1900, Audrey hit in 1957. Rita arrived after almost 50 years, in September 2005. Now, we have Gustav and Ike hit the area (a wide area) in September of 2008.
Hurricane Ike report. Here’s what I know as of early Sunday morning.
Graywood rental houses:
Primrose: Report from renter that there are broken windows and that the storm shutters broke. The ocean came right to the front door (and we’re 20 miles from the ocean), but didn’t get inside. We likely lost all of our landscaping due to salt water.
Camellia: No report but I suspect no water as it is slightly higher than Primrose house. We likely lost all of out landscaping due to salt water
Black Bayou/Reon Road: Surrounded by many feet of water. I saw a picture of a neighbor’s house that had three feet of water in the yard. The picture was taken over 12 hours before the actual storm arrived! I hope that we did not have over ten feet of flood waters or our new house would be flooded. The Black Bayou bridge is closed (to vehicles). I will call my friend Bobby’s cousin (who is the bridge supervisor) for an update later this morning. But during Rita the motor burned out and it took a tug to open and close the bridge.
Friend Ron’s house: Unknown. Ron is one mile south and right on the lake. His home is the first house at the south end of Deatonville and took the full force of the storm.
Friend Karen Thibodeaux’s brand new house: Completely ruined and flooded, along with her brand new car.
Friend Dorothy Carter’s new home in Creole: It is in the same situation as our Black Bayou/Reon Road house. The entire area is submerged.
The problem with this storm for our region was the high storm surge. The winds topped out about 90 miles per hour.
Below is the post that I sent to the hurricane section of http://www.craigslist.com/ It is what I learned from having my house flooded. If your house is flooded use this as a guide to saving your house. Don’t wait for someone else to clean up your place, get busy! You will save yourself a lot of further damage if you can follow these steps right away.
House Flooded? Here’s how to help yourself! < DanielLee > 09/13 14:31:58
I found that after returning to my flooded home in 2005 I didn’t quite know what to do. Here is a list that I made up and followed. Feel free add to it. If you have a friend who was flooded please, please print this out and give it to them.
Turn off the power at the breaker box.
If you can locate a camera take lots of pictures. Be sure to take pictures of the outside of the house as well.
Wear rubber boots, playtex type gloves, and eye protection, if needed.
Clean out the fridge right away!
Get all of the ruined furniture to the road or in the front yard. Store good stuff elsewhere. Remove valuables!
Find a Squeegy or wide shovel.
Cut the drywall above the high water mark. Remove any drywall or paneling at least a foot above the high water mark.
Remove any wet insulation.
Get all of the wet stuff (insulation, drywall, and carpet) out of the house.
If you can find a butane heater open the windows and fire it up.
You should be able to drive a lot of moisture out of the windows before mold takes over.
Go to Sam’s Club and buy something called Odo-Ban (a little goes a long way). It will kill the smell. Use only as directed! The sooner you do it the better!
These are all immediate repairs. Most can do it themselves.
Here’s a few more tips: If your photos are all wet, keep them wet (for now) store them in water until you can dry them properly. Drying photos (behind glass or plastic photo album covers) will stick to anything that they dry to, which will ruin them.
Watch all contractors! Only deal with those who are reputible and established. There will be a lot of fly by night contractors fleeing to your area. If they can’t afford to start without your money, chances are high that they will rip you off. Do not pay up front, like I did. My contractor came recommended by a friend. Now, I am tens of thousands of dollars over budget and don’t even have the sheetrock up. It has been a year since my rebuild started. Don’t get screwed….like I did!
And here is what I added to the post:
Generator Safety Tips < DanielLee > 09/14 07:06:05
Please remember that if you are running a generator or using a butane or propane heater to dry your house out follow these precautions: Operate any generator outside, in a well ventilated area. Well ventilated does not mean in the garage. If you are drying your house out with a butane or propane heater get it working that then get out of the house. Both devices give off poisonous carbon monoxide gas, that will kill you, if breathed in over a period of time. You cannot smell carbon monoxide gas. It will put you to sleep and then you will die.
Please be careful!
Good Luck to all!
The biggest hurdle to cross in the last year was not so reliable, honest or trustworthy Chris Jason Smith ( aka, Chris James Smith) of C. J. Smith’s Custom Cabinets, a most misleading business name. I met Chris Smith on line in the spring ot 2008. He had a shop locally. I wanted to spend my money locally. We met up at Lowe’s where he showed me a set of custom cabinets and told me that he would make me a better set of kitchen cabinets (with all the bells and whistles) for a slightly better price. I went and looked at another job that he had completed, with a contractor friend in tow. It looked like good work. He had a deal and I wrote him a deposit check as he promised me that he would have my new kitchen installed within six weeks. Six weeks came and went.
During the winter of 2008/2009 I go see the so called “progress” on my house. There didn’t seem to be much, if any. My good friend Ron noticed and the next thing I know we had a sheetrock party during the weekend. I was sick with a 104 temp., but we got the majority of it completed. Of course, this was sometime after I had paid Chris Smith over ,000 to complete the sheetrock portion of the job. So spring of 2009 rolls around and Chris hammers in much of the unfinished hardwood that I had purchased. But he only installs the easy part of the job, I would call it the field. He does this before the messy job of sheetrocking is done. He left all of the detail work for “later”…much later. Over the next months Chris managed to get the kitchen and living room taped and textured (two whole rooms). This went on for several more months. And, of course Chris was always asking for more money all along the way.
After a while it got to be a joke, sort of a sick joke. Chris would fret over some miniscule detail (a small amount of oil got onn the wood floor) and he would use it as his excuses to do nothing. He kept telling me that he was “going to move into the house for a month and finish it”. Several times he told me that. He was always asking for more money. The last big money that I sent him to complete the house with….he went out an bought himself a pick-up. Nice.
I asked a friend (a real good friend) to help Chris in his shop so he could finish my job. They worked on my project for weeks. Then Chris asked my friend to work on someone elses project, (without compensation, of course). The freind said no and Chris got mad.
Chris gets mad a lot. He gets mad over the smallest things. He blows up and says nasty evil things to everyone around (but never around the customer). He sent his girlfriend Sandra to tears on a regular basis. He struts around like a banty rooster and acts tough. Then a day or so later he acts like everything is fine.
Chris called me a lot also. He told me that I was one of his only “friends”. He told me that he got depressed. He was crying on the phone. Then, usually, he would ask for more money.
I paid for helpers to try to move my house project along…to do the work th
at Chris should have done himself. That’s Chris Smith’s picture on the right. He even wears a tape measure to give the impression that he knows what he’s doing! He was nice enough to have his girlfriend Sandra take this photo of him for me. Chris told me that Sandra loves him.
Then a call comes from Big Ron. Big Ron tells me me that Chris offers to pay Ron to grout some tile. Ron says O.K. Next, Chris says to Big Ron, “and since your working for Dan be sure to charge him too”. Ron was being honest when he called me and told me about Chris’ offer, later that day.
The big day is upon us and Chris is going to deliver all of the materials that I had purchased. Some of the cabinets were dropped of in prior days. On this day Chris Jason Smith shows up without his girlfriend Sandra (who he is always with). Chris arrives late and gets out of his truck. He grabs his large toolbox; it looked so heavy that Big Ron offers to help, but Chris “has it handled”. My guys notice that all of the finished materials are missing from the truck. Minutes later Chris is elsewhere and my guys need to move the big heavy toolbox. They went to move it and it was light as a feather, in fact it was empty! Imagine that.
While all of this is going on in Louisiana, I am in California driving towards the San Francisco bay area to move my elderly mother. My phone rings and I hear my friend telling me that Chris just “quit”. I was driving so I let my buddy who was with me handle the calls from Chris. It all boiled down to this. Chris thought that he was the big joke on the jobsite (which was true at this point). Chris wanted even more money to finish the job that he was a year behind on and he had already been paid more than it was worth. He hadn’t finished one portion of the job. He still had the materials that I had bought and refused to return them (I think that this is called stealing). He also refused to return my ,200 wood engraving machine, which he later pawned. Chris called and attempted to throw Big Ron under the bus. Chris said that Big Ron was trying to cheat me. What a lame attempt; what a class act!
This guy told me for over a year (well over fifteen months) what a great Christian he was. All the while he was taking my money and taking me to the cleaners. I supported him for this entire time. He was living better than I was. I’ll let others deal with C. J. Smith’s Custom Cabinets. I think what we have here is called “Contractor Fraud”. I am working with the authorities. Chris has a few surprises coming his way. But, the wheels of justice turn slowly. I lost tens of thousands of dollars, and over a year of my house rebuild time to that creep. I figure credit where credit’s due. If this wasn’t all true….I wouldn’t put it into print! The truth hurts C. J. Smith! Let the light of day shine upon you and your shady underground operation.
Shady opertion? Here area a few things about how this guy operates. Here is what I learned after it was too late. Chris told me he has no valid driver’s license. Something about the California DMV holding up paperwork. He drives a truck that he refuses to register. Either this tactic is to not have an attachable asset of maybe it is so he can just walk away, if he has an accident. I’m sure at this poing that there is no insurance on this vehicle. When the heat is on Sandra drives him in her car. He has no bank account. He cashed my checks at a check cashing place or he runs it through Sandra’s bank account. He only “hires” people who are down on their luck and only pays in cash. He calls himself a businessman.
He told me that he spent my money while he was doing “other jobs” and that he needed to make more money to finish my job, bacause “that’s the way it works”.
So with that over, I called a recommended contractor. He finished most of the work that Chris was paid for. Most of the cabinet doors that Chris built didn’t fit the frames that Chris built and many were missing altogether. The real cabinet man had to redo the entire kitchen. I had to pay for many items twice. What a nightmare. I have turned Chris over to a collection agency. Chances of collection are slim.
The smartest advice I got (after it was too late) was that if your contractor/tradesman can’t afford to do the job with his own money, you should run away.
I will be enjoying our new place in just a few short weeks!
I will just have to work at my job for the rest of my life. Here’s a link to my website, check it out: http://www.potteryequipment.com/
Here is a letter that I sent to a friend that I was unable to mail. Bob is on his sailboat somewhere in Mexico. The letter sums up my arrival in Louisiana.
Bob,
I have travelled back to Louisiana.
Here’s the bad news: After driving over 2200 miles I found a semi-truck stuck in my road. It was the only way in or out and I couldn’t drive around it to get to my place. I was unable to unpack. I have met the owner of the truck later in the day. He was hiding it from his wife while he was out with his girlfriend. I had it towed that night. Of course it damaged my road. Had my “caretaker” Ron locked the gate it wouldn’t have been there. Ron wasn’t to be found…..and neither was my truck.
I looked around the place. I looked in Ron’s trailer. It was a mess. I looked in the shop. It was a mess also. I noticed that my nice set of tires and wheels were missing. Inside the house it looked as if no work had been done since I had left several months ago.
On the second day I made an effort to find my truck. I had talked to my friend Lance and he suggested that I call the Sheriff’s office to see if it was impounded. It was…..and so was Ron. I spent the remainder of the day getting my truck back from the tow yard (for 0) and going back for a closer look at my property.
In addition to finding my tires and wheels gone I found that I was missing my brand new air compressor, and some electric hand tools were gone from the house. I spent the remainder of the day filing a stolen property report with the Sheriff’s department.
On the third day I drove up to Dallas to pick up my boat and to see our friend Ken and his wife. Everything was going great. I got the boat and Ken and I were eating some really good barbecue. I started to tell Ken about the barbecue that I was going to cook in at our new house…..when I realized that my beautiful Komodo barbecue had also been stolen…..
This is being written on the morning of the forth day. I am going to drive back to Lake Charles very (very) carefully!
The cost of being on your boat in Mexico: priceless!
Dan
There have been a number of developments to keep up with.
We put up a gate that will keep all but the most determined out; at least it will keep their vehicles out. If they want to steal anything they will have to carry it over a thousand feet.
The LA Citizens suit is moving forward at a snails pace. I hope that there is some interest that will be included with their stalling tactics.
I took a real hard look at rebuilding verses starting over. Starting over looks like the wise move. I have purchased the plans for the Lowe’s KC-1807 “Katrina Cottage” house. They are being looked at by a contractor who is putting some figures together. I will have more to report in the future.
