Lake Charles, Louisiana As Hurricane Delta approaches, residents of a precarious mobile home neighborhood in southwest Lake Charles, Louisiana, packed their bags and evacuated the city following a mandatory order. Delta is scheduled to hit this area late Friday afternoon as a Category 3 hurricane, with sustained winds of around 115 miles per hour.
Just six weeks ago, Category 4 Hurricane Laura ripped through this Lake Charles neighborhood. In southwestern Louisiana, some 10,000 homes were damaged, according to Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.
Marianne Rivera, a leader in the Hispanic community, says that “FEMA helped us a lot, and the Red Cross has been on the ground trying to help those who lost their homes to (Hurricane Laura) find hotels, funds, and food.”
But the streets are still littered with debris — remains of metal, wood with rusty nails and furniture, completely destroyed artifacts and household items. Several mobile homes, CNN could observe, are still without power or water. Some of them have lost their roof or walls, while others have completely collapsed. Appliances and mattresses lay strewn across the lawn.
In 2019, the Lake Charles Hispanic community accounted for 3.7% of the local population, according to the Government Census Bureau. However, it is only a rough estimate, and according to Marianne Rivera, in recent years there has been an influx of immigrants from Central America.
In this community, situated just minutes away from the regional airport, many of the residents are painters, construction workers, or carpenters. They told CNN the pandemic has heavily impacted their work opportunities, and various residents told us they could barely make ends meet.
Luís Guzman is from Honduras and has lived in the United States for a year and a half painting homes. He lives with his sister, Maria Guzman and her two sons. They are headed West to Houston to protect themselves, leaving their belongings behind. “We have to follow the rules they are sharing in the news. What God does no one can contradict, we have to evacuate.”
Maria Guzman and her two sons.
Down the road, Daniel García and his partner were packing up their car as well. García moved to Lake Charles just five days ago from San Antonio, Texas, where he hasn’t been able to work since June. Meanwhile in Louisiana, damaged homes need repairing and García heard they pay around $ 18 an hour to make drywall.
These hopes of employment, however, have been crushed by the evacuation order in place in Lake Charles. García says “he doesn’t feel safe,” so he and his roommates are headed for Aspen, Colorado, hoping to turn this difficult situation into an opportunity to get away.
Delta is forecast to make landfall along the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 hurricane beginning on Friday afternoon and lasting late into the evening, and it could follow a very similar path to Hurricane Laura’s.
As many of the local residents pack their cars and head to Houston, Texas, Imar Sandoval, an immigrant, says that he is not going anywhere and will stay at home. “Nothing is going to happen to me,” he says very sure of himself. Their main concern is that all the debris still left on the side of the road will cause further damage.
It has been a difficult year for the low-income Hispanic community in Lake Charles. Many are evacuating hoping this experience won’t be the same as Hurricane Laura; that they will be able return to more than scraps of what used to be their home.
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