Metal roofs peeled off buildings, red bricks from a collapsed building mingles with big
chunks of broken glass on a corner, rubble all around. This is how the area around Michael Cobb’s home in Houma, a southern town in Louisiana, looks like after Hurricane Ida.

Cobb, who lives in a beautiful place built from cypress 120 years ago and painted white with purple trim told AP, “It’s like a bomb went off and just blew off houses’ roofs, flattened trees, snapped them like matchsticks.”

“But we’ll live, we’ll endure, we’ll rebuild. It’s what we do,” said Cobb.

The man recalled how the surroundings of his home, which survived the deadly disaster only with a water leak, looked heavenly before Ida ruined it all.

“It was such a pretty place,” said Cobb who is filled with sadness and seeing the Main Street of the southern Louisiana town which now looks nothing more like a pile of debris.

Also read: New Orleans declares a night curfew in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida

Cobb’s mother-in-law, who has spent her whole life in this region, this very area to be particular, said the storm was terrifying and the aftermath of it is even more worrisome.

Every tree near her home has collapsed and electricity can be disrupted for a month, she added.

“You can’t even pass,” said Courteaux, Cobb’s 66-year-old mother-in-law.

However, power crews have started repairing the power grid around Houma, but no one is expecting a quick fix considering the damage the hurricane has done.

People in these parts are used to surviving hurricanes, Cobb said, and Ida won’t be any different.

In pics: Hurricane Ida causes catastrophic damage across Louisiana, New Orleans

Houma, situated on the Intracoastal Waterway where it crosses Bayou Terrebonne, used to be a happy town sheltering some 33,000 working-class people who largely make their living off the nearby Gulf of Mexico. Many catch fish, shrimp and oysters. Others build and repair ships and barges or work support jobs for the oil industry. 

(With inputs form Associated Press)