I am standing among the battered pews of a Baptist church, on shards of glass and wood that are strewn across the floor, gazing at its partly collapsed roof. The relics of the backto-back hurricanes that pummelled this community in 2020 are still scattered here and throughout much of Cameron. Residents have long referred to this distant part of the US as "the end of the world" - but the adage feels more prescient now than ever. The population has dwindled from nearly 2,000 to a few hundred since the storms; empty foundations mark the locations of many homes that were swept away in tidal surges; and a gargantuan gas export terminal looms on the horizon.
Down the street, I meet Lerlene Rodrigue. She is living in a trailer next to her partly destroyed family home, which is still being rebuilt.
She tells me how the storm surge from Hurricane Laura brought her father's buried coffin "floating up".
It was missing for years and was rediscovered only months ago; it is now, finally, "back in the ground".
"We came back," she says of Laura's aftermath. "But if it happens again, I'm not. I'm done." The humid swamplands and coastal communities of Louisiana's third congressional district will not decide the outcome of this election.
Bu hikaye The Guardian Weekly dergisinin October 25, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye The Guardian Weekly dergisinin October 25, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
Finn family murals
The optimism that runs through Finnish artist Tove Jansson's Moomin stories also appears in her public works, now on show in a Helsinki exhibition
I hoped Finland would be a progressive dream.I've had to think again Mike Watson
Oulu is five hours north from Helsinki by train and a good deal colder and darker each winter than the Finnish capital. From November to March its 220,000 residents are lucky to see daylight for a couple of hours a day and temperatures can reach the minus 30s. However, this is not the reason I sense a darkening of the Finnish dream that brought me here six years ago.
A surplus of billionaires is destabilising our democracies Zoe Williams
The concept of \"elite overproduction\" was developed by social scientist Peter Turchin around the turn of this century to describe something specific: too many rich people for not enough rich-person jobs.
'What will people think? I don't care any more'
At 90, Alan Bennett has written a sex-fuelled novella set in a home for the elderly. He talks about mourning Maggie Smith, turning down a knighthood and what he makes of the new UK prime minister
I see you
What happens when people with acute psychosis meet the voices in their heads? A new clinical trial reveals some surprising results
Rumbled How Ali ran rings around apartheid, 50 years ago
Fifty years ago, in a corner of white South Africa, Muhammad Ali already seemed a miracle-maker.
Trudeau faces 'iceberg revolt'as calls grow for PM to quit
Justin Trudeau, who promised “sunny ways” as he won an election on a wave of public fatigue with an incumbent Conservative government, is now facing his darkest and most uncertain political moment as he attempts to defy the odds to win a rare fourth term.
Lost Maya city revealed through laser mapping
After swapping machetes and binoculars for computer screens and laser mapping, a team of researchers have discovered a lost Maya city containing temple pyramids, enclosed plazas and a reservoir which had been hidden for centuries by the Mexican jungle.
'A civil war' Gangs step up assault on capital
Armed fighters advance into neighbourhoods at the heart of Port-au-Prince as authorities try to restore order
Reality bites in the Himalayan 'kingdom of happiness'
High emigration and youth unemployment levels belie the mountain nation's global reputation for cheeriness
