We Are Not Okay: Southwest Louisiana After Laura. And Delta. And Covid. (Oh, my!)

One of the most frustrating things about going through Laura and Delta and then hearing everyone who’s ever been through any hurricane tell you how much they understand and how similar their storm was as they offer up unsolicited advice on how to recover is that their recoveries had different rules. Literally.

Insurance has changed. FEMA assistance has changed. All aid policies have changed. The help simply isn’t there anymore, and what little remains has been significantly minimized to the point of being effectively useless.

Insurance policies are underpaying (when they pay at all), charging separate deductibles for each storm through a legal loophole, requiring absurd levels of documentation and evidence of damages to such ridiculous extremes that simply going through the effort of providing such evidence would end up costing people more than if they just replaced the items on their own, all while denying every claim they can as desk adjusters reevaluate the determinations made by their own field adjusters and reduce their findings in favor of the insurance companies.

FEMA only steps in if you don’t have insurance, which automatically excludes all the people who already aren’t getting the coverage they’ve paid for. When it does help, the funds are small and aid is slow to come, if it comes at all.

There have been no significant national fundraisers to help Southwest Louisiana like there were after other storms hit more recognizable cities. Charitable organizations lack donations and volunteers to be able to effectively help people. The rest of the nation has moved on and assumes everything is back to normal here.

It isn’t.

Remember, while the same area getting hit by two separate hurricanes within weeks of each other itself is unprecedented, all of this is happening in the middle of an ongoing pandemic that had already decimated the nation’s economy months earlier and absolutely devastated local economies nationwide.

People just don’t have the money to spend after months of covid along with two evacuations and two rounds of rebuilding. Local businesses don’t have the money to rebuild and resupply their stocks. Thousands of workers are unable to work, due either to their places of employment being closed or destroyed, or to the complete lack of anywhere to live if their homes were significantly damaged.

Lake Charles, a working-class city of roughly 78,000 people, has been eviscerated by Hurricanes Laura and Delta. Thousands of residents remain displaced, and the dire needs of the city have been overlooked. https://t.co/SpVSAOkh1r

— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 20, 2020

There are no available hotel rooms, with the few operational places booked solid. There are no available rental properties, and what few remain have doubled or tripled their rents. Trailers, campers, and RVs are impossible to find and cost a small fortune if you’re lucky enough to stumble upon a battered up and heavily used model just to have some kind of roof over your head.

It’s an awful situation and no one has been through it before. No one has been through two back-to-back hurricanes before, with one being on record as the strongest storm to ever hit the state. No one has done it in the middle of a global pandemic. And no one has done it since all the laws and policies were quietly changed to favor corporate interests after previous storms cost them too much.

See beyond your own experience and realize the world has changed since whatever words of advice or criticism you had to offer were relevant. If you’re willing to actually help us, you are most welcome here. If not, we’d all very much appreciate it if you’d just shut up.

Want some books? 'Course ya do!

NOTE:  I know times are hard and yeah, I need to make a living too, but if you want to read any of my books but can't afford to buy them right now, hit me up.

I'll take care of it.

Humor | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

Have you ever lived through an experience that was so humiliating that you wanted to die, but when you tell it to all your friends, they can't stop laughing?

Have you ever made a decision that seemed like a good idea at the time, but you're still living with the hilarious consequences years later?

If so, then grab a snack, get comfortable, and prepare to have all of your own poor life choices seem just a little bit more bearable.

You're welcome.

Short Stories
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The nine stories of rage and sadness collected here range from the most intimate of human experiences to the wildest realms of magic and fantasy. The first story is a violent gut-punch to the soul, and the rest of them just hit harder from there.

Those who tough it out will find a book filled with as much hope as despair, a constant contradiction pulling you from one extreme to another.

Life might knock us down, over and over, and will the beat the ever-loving snot out of us from the time we're old enough to give it attitude until the day we finally let it win and stop getting up.

Always get back up.

Gaming | Nonfiction
Available now from the following retailers

This isn't just a book. It's a portal to other worlds where there be magic and dragons and hilarious pirates. Okay, not really. But this book is about those portals, except they're called video games.

The Life Bytes series of books take a deep dive into one man's personal journey through childhood into kinda/sorta being a responsible, competent adult as told through the magical lens of whatever video games he was playing at the time.

Part One starts way back in 1975 and meanders down various digital pathways until, oh, around about 1993 or so.

If you're feeling nostalgic for the early days of gaming or if you just want to understand why the gamer in your life loves this hobby so much, take a seat in your favorite comfy chair and crack this bad boy open.

I'll try to not be boring.

Horror
Available now from the following retailers

What you are about to read is not a story. There is no beginning, middle, or end.

What follows is nothing more than a series of journal entries involving shadow people, sleep paralysis, and crippling fear. It’s not pretty, it doesn’t follow story logic, and nothing works out well in the end.

You've been warned.