Gulf Coast steps up to help neighbors in Louisiana after Ida
Graham Compton woke up at 2:30 a.m. at his home in Biloxi on Thursday, went into his kitchen, and began blending 300 eggs.
The egg mixture would later that morning accompany a trailer full of other breakfast burrito fixings, along with a 320 quart and 165 quart cooler filled with ice water and Gatorade, a 105 quart cooler “slapped” full of canned food, trays of chicken and shrimp fried rice donated from a local meal preparation business and toiletries, feminine products and tarps to Thibodaux, Louisiana - a town ravaged by Hurricane Ida.
“We didn’t have a plan. I’ve never organized like this before in my life. I woke up three days ago like man, these people need us bad. Bad,” Compton said in an interview after he returned to the Gulf Coast around 5 p.m. Thursday.
“I sent a text to my friend who’s a nurse and I said, “shoot around my Venmo, I want to put my trailer together to go over and help these people.” And it wasn’t 30 minutes and I had $300 dollars in my Venmo. And it just kept rolling in. Before you knew it, we had $1,800.”
“The way that it unfolded, it’s like a storybook.”
Compton is just one of a number of individual Gulf Coast residents who have tapped into the generosity of local businesses and neighbors of good will after the Category 4 storm left much of South Louisiana without roofs, power, and running water — an aftermath many on the Coast have likened to Hurricane Katrina’s impact across South Mississippi. These residents have provided rides, gas, food, water, tarps and lodging out of a sense of moral responsibility and connection to an area of the country where it’s always someone’s “turn” to get obliterated by a tropical storm.
“Just living down here you, you know you’re going to get smashed. Wherever you live on the coast with a hurricane. It’s just your turn. There’s no way of getting around it. And the thing that gets me is that every time something like that happens, our neighbors help us, we help our neighbors and it’s just surreal ... I can’t stop shaking, I’m amazed at what we accomplished in 12 hours.” said Compton.
“We were just handing out free meals, cases of water, feminine products, canned goods, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, soap. We’ve lived here all of our lives, we know what people need after a hurricane.”
Overwhelming need across South Louisiana
Compton said he and his marine corps buddies, Biloxi resident Chris Pelfrey and Thibodaux native Jamie Boudreaux, brought their supplies, a Blackstone grill and got to work feeding over a thousand people throughout the day, who lined up about “three quarters of a mile down the road.”
“We just went over there and said, we just want to cook for these people, and we sat at the side of the road, and it turned out, so many people showed up that the sheriff’s department asked us to move down to a church parking lot because we were blocking traffic. And the sheriff made us move down to a local collection point with all these supplies, with the national guard.”
The need for food was so intense in Thibodaux that Compton and his friends ran out. He’s headed back on Saturday with over 2,000 pounds of ice and more supplies.
“It really didn’t start to get surreal until we were running out of food. And we bought 300 eggs—that’s a lot of eggs. And once we ran out of burritos, we started handing out sausage plates. And people were so damn happy to have sausage plates,” Compton said.
“People were just so happy for a few minutes to have breakfast—you don’t think anything of it but when something like this happens, a hot meal and a cold water, their day is made.”
Rides for Evacuees
Diamondhead-based taxi driver Shawntel Cuevas has also aided Louisianans in a time of need - she’s been driving desperate evacuees across the Gulf Coast since Ida hit, as few transportation options exist because gas remains scarce.
Cuevas has run her business, Blue Eyes Taxi, for six years and said she has never dealt with this many customers before. Cuevas said she and her four drivers have been working nearly 24-hour shifts to get people out of New Orleans, where there is still no power.
“I don’t know how they found me but they found me, and I’ve been taking people back and forth and I guess word gets around quick because everyone’s been calling me, wanting me to pick them up from New Orleans and take them to Jackson, Houston, wherever they can go,” she said.
Heavy traffic has made the trips about double the time they would usually take, but gas hasn’t been an issue for the taxi driver like it has been for most Louisianans and Mississippians right now. She keeps about 20 gallons of spare gas in her trunk.
“And all my workers have been putting forth the effort to get everybody out. It’s been hard because the traffic is so horrendous,” she said. “The problem is there’s no gas in Louisiana. None of the taxi drivers can leave and it’s a fight to get gas in the surrounding areas because of everybody trying to get gas. In Bay St. Louis there’s lines off the interstate.”
Cuevas said she isn’t sure how people have been finding her service, as it’s based on the Mississippi Coast. She puts content on social media, she said, and thinks the rest of her customers have come by word of mouth.
“I don’t know how they found out but once they did find out it spread like wildfire. Now we’re trying to accommodate everybody,” she said. “I’m so in awe right now figuring out how did all this happen? I’m the only taxi business in Bay St. Louis and you’ve got millions of taxis in New Orleans and they call on me. The good Lord’s good and I know that.”
Her service has been the only option for many customers, Cuevas said, who have been desperately trying to evacuate the sweltering city.
“I’m supposed to be helping these people. I have chills on my body talking about it. They all told me when they saw me, you’re an angel,” she said. “They told me I saved them. Because it could have been bad. Because they had nowhere to go, they were stuck out on the streets.”
Coast helps with lodging, survivor location
On Friday, Long Beach resident Diana Cruse was anxiously posting on a Facebook group she created after Hurricane Ida devastated Louisiana, trying to find an insulin dependent diabetic amputee a ride from his apartment in New Orleans and a place to stay on the Gulf Coast.
The heat was unbearable at his powerless home, the wheelchair-bound Louisianan said, and 911 and other calls he made for assistance weren’t actualizing. Cruse’s group, ‘Hurricane Ida - Louisiana Strong’ with over 110 members was working to share information about this man to their networks in order to find him relief.
“My main goal for that group is to help people find people for information,” she said. “People can come to my group and say “this is the help I need,” and people from Mississippi are volunteering and helping.”
Cruse she felt “helpless” after Ida hit her home state, so she began the online effort to connect those ravaged by the storm with resources around the area. She does not have a vehicle to take back supplies and also has a roommate in a small Long Beach apartment and cannot house any evacuees.
“I just don’t have the means, and it’s breaking my heart,” she said. “I have family friends, loved ones, acquaintances all over Louisiana and it’s just heartbreaking to know all these different areas have been affected like they are.”
So she’s stuck to coordination. So far, Cruse has been able to connect Louisianans with lodging on the Coast and has even helped someone locate their family members.
“There are still people that are missing, there are still people that are trapped. I help by posting and using people that I know in different areas to see if we can find them,” Cruse said. “I have this one friend who lives in Amite and two people that she knows lived in Kenner and weren’t responsive. I was able to get in contact with someone that I knew who lived in Kenner and they were able to ride down that street to see if they were OK.”
Katrina flashbacks for Coast residents
Compton said the severity of Louisianan’s current situation in the days post-Ida hit him as he drove through the devastation on Thursday - it looked like how the Gulf Coast did in days after Hurricane Katrina, he said.
“It looked just like it did here 16 years ago. Exactly like it did. Boats washed up on the marsh, mobile homes spread everywhere —just a war zone. It’s the only way to describe it,” he said.
Gulfport resident Shannan Blethen, along with the motorcycle clubs and rural Jeep organizations he belongs to, also has coordinated food, water and fuel collections for Louisianans out of obligation to help he received after Hurricane Katrina.
“I want to do my part because I lived through Hurricane Katrina. Three and a half feet of water in my house. We live south of the tracks in Gulfport. Plus, at the time of Katrina, I had an 18-day-old daughter. We didn’t have power for more than two months. And with a newborn, that wasn’t easy,” Blethen said.
He’s headed to Lockport, Louisiana on Saturday — a town right outside of Houma, where the eye of the storm hit. With help from the Pisotoleros, Cycos, Southern Mayhem Brotherhood, Savage Association and the Talons MC - the Coast’s motorcycle, Jeep and heavy metal communities - three 25-foot trailers and four trucks are filled to the brim with resources for friends and family in Louisiana.
On Friday night, Blethen and his motorcycle, Jeep and heavy metal friends camped out in front of Coastal Daiquiri Bar & Grill in Long Beach, where they collected supplies and took donations ahead of their trip.
Pistolero Reverse, the president of the Pascagoula chapter of a motorcycle group called the Pistoleros, was also instrumental in gathering the over $1,900 worth of food and supplies. Reverse said his community often gives back to the area, though hurricane aid is new territory.
“Hurricanes are new to us, but giving back isn’t,” he said. “We love our community.”
