Left largely to fend for themselves, working people are acting together to reduce the impact of the devastation.

“We’re running three generators, we’ve got the pumps running into the swimming pool for the kids, we lay the mattresses out and house about 20 people in the clubhouse,” said Rick Courtney, 38, whose family is part of the maintenance staff at the Country Aire Mobile Home Park just outside Lake Charles. “Every night we’re running the grill and pooling our food to help each other out.” Of the more than 200 mobile homes, roughly half were demolished or severely damaged.

Courtney had worked on an offshore oil rig, which Rita swept out to sea. According to the Financial Times, the storm “caused more damage to oil rigs than any other storm in history and will force companies to delay drilling for oil in the U.S. and as far away as the Middle East.” Thousands of workers in this region are employed in building, servicing, or working on these rigs.

Tina Augustine, 43, a nursing home worker, was just returning October 1 to assess the damage to her trailer. She was luckier than neighbors whose trailers were reduced to rubble. Two friends stopped by to check in and help. “I took my last $200 with me and went to stay with my brother-in-law’s family in Lafayette,” she said. “There were 18 of us in a house smaller than my trailer.”

“After the evacuation you were on your own. You got no help,” she added. “At the Red Cross they turned us out the door. They told us that they were too busy helping people from Katrina to help people from Rita. Then they locked the door to their office.”

Augustine tried to get her last paycheck from her boss at the nursing home but discovered it had been destroyed by the storm and the boss was nowhere to be found. “We work like dogs at this place for $5.15 an hour,” she said. “They just don’t get it. Without us there wouldn’t be anything.”

After the two storms hundreds of thousands face similar conditions, sleeping on couches and floors with relatives scattered across the region. More than 100,000 remain in shelters.

More than 200,000 homes were destroyed in New Orleans alone from Katrina, roughly seven times more than all the losses of four hurricanes that made landfall last year. Thousands more have been destroyed by Rita. Government officials have made it clear that their reconstruction priorities do not include working-class communities.

Housing and Urban Development chief Alphonso Jackson told the Houston Chronicle that a large portion of working-class residents of New Orleans who are Black should not expect to return to the city.

“New Orleans is not going to be as black as it was for a long time, if ever again,” Jackson told the Chronicle. Prior to the hurricane, New Orleans was 67 percent Black. But according to the Chronicle, “Jackson predicted New Orleans will slowly draw back as many as 375,000 people, but that only 35 to 40 percent of the post-Katrina population would be black.” Working-class housing, much of which had been concentrated on the low ground, is not part of the development plan.
 
 
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