For Some in Plaquemines, No Power in Sight

Sad sights litter the road as people return by boat to southern Louisiana: scattered steel drums, warped telephone poles, stranded cattle, a shrimp boat on its side. But residents devoted to the country life and independent spirit of Plaquemines Parish—a stretch of marshy land at the state's southeastern end—are used to disasters like Hurricane Isaac. “Call me crazy,” one tells the New York Times. “I don’t want to be nowhere else. If this happened a hundred times, I’m going to move back a hundred times."

A hundred times it may be, considering that Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and the BP oil spill have all struck since 2005. What's more, a slab of Louisiana no smaller than Delaware has vanished into the Gulf over the past 80 years, and Plaquemines is growing ever thinner. For now, roads remain under water and one resident predicts power won't be completely back until Christmas. One shrimper's decision to live in a trailer, not a house that can be washed away, probably says it all. "My lifetime, my kids’ lifetimes, we ain’t going to be here no more,” he says. “How much can you take?” (More Louisiana stories.)