CAMERON PARISH

Scores of people in coastal Louisiana are still living in campers on dirt mounds or next to cement slabs where their houses once stood. “We’re scared to death for this next season,” said Clarence Dyson, who is staying with his wife and four kids in a 35-foot-long (11-meter-long) camper with bunk beds while the home they had been renting in Cameron Parish undergoes repairs after Hurricane Laura. The parish — a Louisiana designation similar to a county — is made up of small communities on the southwestern coast where residents have lived for generations, either working in the shrimp industry or more recently at one of the area’s liquefied natural gas plants.

She was one of the very few left in Cameron, Louisiana whose home wasn’t badly damaged or completely wiped out during Hurricane Laura just six weeks ago. Bolivar Peninsula prepare for Hurricane DeltaRoy James has lived on the Bolivar Peninsula for over a year, and he’s prepared for Delta. People along the coast have already experienced storm surge from Laura and Tropical Storm Beta. Many Galveston County residents were also concerned about those in southwest Louisiana, who will be hit with their second major storm in less than two months. Many Louisianans are still displaced and struggling to start the long process of recovery as they prepare for another hit from Delta.

– Hurricane Laura made landfall in southwest Louisiana nearly three weeks ago. The category-four storm tied the record as the strongest hurricane to ever make landfall in Louisiana. While meteorologists forecasted a 15- to 20-foot storm surge from Laura. National Weather Service meteorologist Jeffry Evans was part of a team that conducted a damage assessment to verify the storm surge in the region. “It’s what they call an unsurvivable storm surge," said Evans.

Some key takeaways of the immediate analysis of Laura's effects have emerged:IT WILL TAKE MONTHS TO KNOW EFFECTS:Scientists say some coastal impact from Hurricane Laura is inevitable. Bren Haase, who heads the states Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, said the eastern Cameron shoreline got pounded pretty hard." SALINITY'S A PROBLEMAnother question is how long storm surge waters sit before eventually draining away. Laura took a slight jog to the East just before making landfall which probably prevented some of the worst storm surge from pushing all the way into Lake Charles. This might be in part because the storm blew through so quickly and the storm surge was so high that it simply rode over the marshes, rather than tearing them up.

Bradley Beard calls Hurricane Laura his third strike. This is all I got.Across Cameron Parish, the coastal parish where Hurricane Laura crashed ashore early Thursday, residents dug through what was left of their belongings, covered now-stripped roofs with tarps, and took stock of the damage. Edwards called Laura the most powerful hurricane to strike Louisiana, a shocking assessment in a state where Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29, 2005. Out in western Louisiana it is the storm that came ashore a month after Katrina Hurricane Rita that evokes strong memories. Her daughters insist that they stay in Cameron Parish.

It was really, really bad instead of apocalyptic, Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said. Lauren Sylvester heeded the mandatory evacuation, leaving her townhouse in Lake Charles on Wednesday to stay with her mom in New Iberia. Between the evacuation order and the storm surge projections, she didnt want to take a risk. In the end, the city got maybe half the storm surge it could have received, he said. The worst storm surge is to the east of a hurricane's eyewall because of the combination of the storm's counterclockwise whirl and northward movement.