HOUMA — George Arthur, 69, of Houma, stood at the kitchen sink of his small house on Park Avenue on Monday morning where a collection of ceramic chickens lined the windowsill and an assortment of frying pans hung nearby.
That's where he was standing Sunday afternoon when winds from Category 4 Hurricane Ida sent white ceiling tiles raining down on him. The entire roof was blown off the wood-frame house he bought 17 years ago after losing his Chauvin house and everything in it to Hurricane Rita.
"I ran to the living room, grabbed my wife's ashes — I just lost her a few months ago — got my important papers" and rode the rest of the hurricane out in his grey pickup truck. The truck, he said, "was rockin' like a boat."
Ida, one of the strongest storms to ever hit Louisiana, made landfall just before noon Sunday at Port Fourchon with 150 mph winds. Throught the day and evening, the storm blazed a trail northward just east of New Orleans.
Catastrophic damage has been reported in across Terrebonne and Lafourche parishes, and officials have warned residents there could be without power up to three weeks.
Arthur moved to Louisiana in 1979 from West Virginia to work on supply boats servicing the oil and gas industry. He's had heart surgery and suffers from COPD and emphysema, making it difficult to breathe and, at times, to speak.
Catching his breath and leaning against the kitchen counter. a sense of fear and despair on his face, he remembered the storm's punch.
"The wind," he recalled. "There's no way to describe the wind. I know what it's like to be in a tornado."
Arthur and his late wife, Jenny, had to cancel the insurance on their house a while back. Surviving on a fixed income, they couldn't afford the $3,000 policy anymore.
"This house stood here 70 years," Arthur said. "It survived every storm that came through here, except this."
Near tears, Arthur said he lost everything he and his wife worked for.
"I don't know what to do. We had a lot of good years in this house, 'til Jenny got sick."
His neighbor, Pam Rollans, was moving metal siding from the road, contemplating how blessed she is that her house only lost a few shingles during Ida and grateful Arthur escaped from his house unharmed.
People were stopping by offering to help clean up, she said.
"That's what Louisiana is all about," Rollans added.
Houma, which caught the western edge of Ida's eyewall, suffered scattered damage: Part of roofs missing, metal carports blown away, trees and utility poles snapped in half.
The Houma Police station on Park Avenue lost much of its roof. Vandebilt Catholic High School and H.L. Bourgeois High School also suffered roof damage.
In the Broadmoor neighborhood, trees blocked streets Monday morning as residents ventured out to survey the damage. A pontoon party boat lay overturned in a boulevard behind Dillard's at Southland Mall.
Businesses on Main Street downtown took a hit, with windows blown out and metal awnings blocking the street.
Genice Billiot of Bayou Blue was strolling along Main Street looking at the damage. She rode the hurricane out in Houma. Her neighbor and son, who stayed in her mobile home in Bayou Blue, said the news wasn't good.
"The whole street's devastated," she said.
At her home, Billiot said, "The roof peeled back, one wall collapsed. Everything's just gone."
Like Arthur, Billiot lost everything to hurricanes before this, to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Barry. Despite the many setbacks, she said she's blessed.
"We're all alive. This can be re-done," she said, looking around at damaged Main Street businesses. "It might take months, but it can be redone."