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A quick glance at Peggy Martin’s Gonzales, Louisiana, home, and it’s clear she loves plants. Paintings and prints of flowers line her walls, tablecloths pop with colorful flora, potted plants fill corners and bouquets dot shelves and end tables. Her yard is an oasis of greens, pinks, reds and purples.
Growing along her garden gate is an extraordinary plant with a storied past, a prolific blooming vining rose that bears her name, the Peggy Martin rose.
Martin’s garden pales in comparison to the paradise she had in the town of Phoenix, Louisiana, in lower Plaquemines Parish. Nestled near the Mississippi River, her property bloomed with more than 1,000 plants, including 450 antique roses.
“I just kept collecting all kinds of plants,” Martin recalled. “It was a very beautiful place.”
It was there in 1989 that she first planted a rose with no name or origins she could ascertain. The rambling rose grew up a pole and along the corrugated roof of a tractor shed. But her paradise was lost 20 years ago when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast.
A pair of natural disasters stunned south Louisiana in 2005.
When Hurricane Katrina hit the coast on Aug. 29 and Hurricane Rita followed on Sept. 24, much of south Louisiana sustained tremendous damage. The storms caused more than 1,100 deaths, according to the Louisiana Department of Health; displaced several communities; and led to $108 billion in damage, according to the National Weather Service. LSU AgCenter economists estimated that the state’s agricultural sectors sustained nearly $1.6 billion in losses from the storms.
With personnel across the state dedicated to serving others, the AgCenter committed to help shelter and provide care for displaced people and their pets, rescue livestock and support Louisianans in the aftermath of the storms.
“You are never prepared for these kinds of things, and it’s not something that you expect to have to deal with when you take a job doing extension work,” said Paul Coreil, the current chancellor of LSU Alexandria. In 2005, Coreil was the director of extension, which is a system of educating and assisting people on important topics such as agriculture and healthy living. “Extension has a tradition of helping people in crisis and improving quality of life. It’s so close to the mission that we felt very strongly that we needed to be responsive to the whole state.”
This is an excerpt of an article that appeared in the LSU AgCenter’s After the Storm publication originally printed in 2007.
Rusty Gaude’s father died August 28, 2005, the day before Hurricane Katrina struck. The next day Gaude, an LSU AgCenter fisheries agent and resident of New Orleans, had to leave his father’s remains at a funeral home in Folsom and evacuate, not knowing what was going to happen.
Gaude was back in Louisiana three days later, and he and his brothers buried their father with a plan to hold a proper funeral whenever possible. (It was – six weeks later.)
But despite all of this going on in his personal life, Gaude was back at work the day after he buried his father, helping his fellow workers and clientele in Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes, two of the hardest hit by Katrina.
Gaude is just one example of the dedication and self-sacrifice exhibited by AgCenter employees in the aftermath of the worst hurricane disaster to hit the United States – Katrina and Rita only three weeks apart.
Hurricane and flood-resistant home improvements can ramp up your home’s and family’s resilience. They are also a good investment to protect your home, add value, and do your part to reduce the impact a disaster has on the community and nation.
Teaching youth about emergency preparedness provides essential life skills and empowers them to be proactive in unexpected crises. By instilling this knowledge early on, we foster a sense of responsibility and resilience in future generations.
Power outages, floods and other issues can affect food following a disaster. Having the right foods in your pantry can provide peace of mind. Well before a storm, stock up on staples that do not require refrigeration, cooking, water or special preparation.
