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“I’m going to take over this from Katrina,” said Fitte, a former star who ran at the school. “We’re thinking of going back for a few weeks at the most because we don’t have electricity. After Katrina, people didn’t have homes. All you could see were the foundations.”
Still, Buras is in a dangerous position. Highway 23 is flanked by the Mississippi on one side and the sprawling Bay on the other. What was once swampy is now increasingly becoming open water as a result of the canals opened to reach the oil rigs, levees that prevent the replenishment of sediments from the river, and the impact of hurricanes. At the local cemetery, a dozen or so coffins that were floated during Katrina remain, lined with concrete and draped across the floor, side by side like piano keys, spray-painted in case they’re washed again.
“If another Katrina hits, I don’t see anything coming back here,” said Mark Cognevich, council chairman of Plaquemines Parish. “Many people do not have insurance. Check to see most live. I don’t think the federal government is going to pour money here like they did after Katrina. They may not allow anyone to move here.”
Perhaps no high school in the state has felt the severity of the hurricanes more severely than South Cameron High School in southwestern Louisiana. The Mighty Tarpons reached the state championship football game four times from 1969 to 1996. But football was abandoned in the 2018 season after South Cameron lost two games and finished third with at least 11 players.
According to the latest census figures, the population in Cameron Parish has dropped from about 10,000 residents in 2000 to less than 6,000 today. An exodus followed the scythe of Hurricanes Rita in 2005 and Ike in 2008. Some residents have been put off by building regulations and prohibitive insurance costs that require homes to be built 12 to 14 feet above the ground. Some were exhausted by the storms that at one point left students in South Cameron attend classes in the bingo hall.
Last year, Laura’s punitive wave destroyed all of South Cameron High’s athletic facilities. The 2021-22 academic year opened with only 40 students enrolled in high school. Parry LaLande, who coached football for 28 years in South Cameron, urged the school to merge with Grand Lake High School, which is located 15 miles inland on a ridge and is slightly safer from a storm surge. Grand Lake won the state football championship last season despite not having a field. He also played in the baseball title game.
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