Volunteer rescuer describes 'desperation' in hurricane-battered Louisiana

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Todd Terrell says the situation in hurricane-battered Louisiana is among the worst he's seen in his many years of responding to disasters. 

Terrell is the founder of the United Cajun Navy, a group of volunteers who provide rescue operations and other first responder services during major disasters and weather events. 

Ida made landfall on Sunday as a Category 4 hurricane, 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, evoking memories of a disaster that killed more than 1,800 people in 2005 and devastated New Orleans. It weakened to a tropical depression by late Monday as it churned over Mississippi.

A $14.5-billion US system of levees, flood gates and pumps designed in Katrina's wake largely protected Louisiana from the level of death and devastation seen 16 years ago, especially in and around New Orleans. But some smaller parishes in the south weren't as lucky.

Terrell is on the ground in Baton Rouge, about 130 km northwest of New Orleans, co-ordinating his volunteers in the hardest-hit towns in the southern part of the state. Here is part of his conversation with As It Happens guest host Peter Armstrong. 

You describe these scenes in Houma and in some of the harder hit areas. What kind of rescue missions have you and your team had to do?

Sunday night and starting Sunday evening was pretty dire. We were getting calls in on some of our communication channels, even including some of the 911 communities that give us their calls. I've never heard that much desperation on such a big level. People's roofs were getting ripped off while they were on the phone with us, and then it went dead. You know, the phone lines just went dead.

Fortunately, the majority of the people that we were on the phone with survived. We were telling them: Get a mattress and get in the centre of the room, or get in a tub. 

Now, the other thing was, you know, there's nowhere for these people to go. And that's a big problem. 

We're starting to see it today, as power in Baton Rouge comes on and a lot of the gas stations are getting their power back, the lines are just long. There was a two-mile-long line at a convenience store this morning just to go in and get food — you know, a bag of chips or something. So this is going to be something that we, and the country, [will be] dealing with for many, many years.

As you say, with nowhere to go, people are stuck at homes that are sometimes in a dangerous condition. What do these people need now today as your teams are out there dealing with them?

Right now, you know, water, tarps, snacks, baby food, baby diapers. Those are the critical things … Just basic essentials. When you see that somebody just needs a bottle of water, you know, that's pretty dire.

And just how hot is it in Louisiana today?

It's just muggy and it's bad.

And one thing that we're not even talking about is COVID. You know, Louisiana was one of the states that led the nation with COVID. And, unfortunately, for whatever it's worth, nobody checked temperature or nobody checked, you know, vaccine cards or anything. We just had to rescue people. And we knew that this was a possibility this year that we would run into this problem. So we're going to see how that plays out as time goes on.

How crucial do you think were these newly built levees that they put in place?

The levees held fairly good this time. There was a bunch that were overtopped. One of the biggest problems in New Orleans right now with the power being off is that if some of these pumping stations are not operable for another storm, it could make this one look like a little thunderstorm.

Where are we headed now in terms of what your team needs will be doing over the next couple of days?

Right now, we've been assisting some local parishes in just clearing the roads. We have some guys that came from north Louisiana and really all over the country. We have people represented in about 13 states that are helping right now.

You've got to remember, getting back to COVID ... a lot of the nurses, doctors, firemen, and police officers are affected. So, you know, they have homes to deal with that were destroyed. They have families that were destroyed. So … that's kind of leaving us vulnerable as a community, so we're trying to help take care of them.

I know in one of the parishes, a lot of the sheriff employees, their homes were destroyed. Some of them, just the roof was off. So we're kind of working with them right now to kind of help them get back on their feet.

I know you do this work and you've done it before. But on a personal note, how are you and how's your team? And are you getting any sleep? You guys taking care of each other?

You know me personally, I'm struggling a little bit. This was kind of the anniversary of Katrina when we all suffered some big losses. 

It's kind of crazy. I had foot surgery a month and a half ago, and I've been off my foot for six weeks, and they took the stitches out and they said [to take] a week off of it, and I didn't. So my foot's about the size of a watermelon.

We've got a lot of volunteers that came in that are medics and stuff. So they've been kind of taking care of me.

Our volunteers, we have a lot of veterans, and they want to do something. A lot of veterans are kind of perturbed with the way the country is going, so they're here to help. And it really shows that the country, we have a will to survive. And in Louisiana, we're resilient.

I always said that this is God's way of making people work together. Because we don't think about COVID. We don't think about crime. We just think about helping each other. And that's what we're doing. 

Written by Sheena Goodyear with files from Reuters. Interview produced by Sarah Jackson. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.