Residents in a Louisiana city devastated by 2020 hurricanes are still far from recovery

LAKE CHARLES, La. (AP) — Every other day Lois Malvo waits for her son to bring six buckets of water from a spigot in the backyard. He then bathes his 78-year-old mother using water heated on the stove and washes her with a spray pump he bought online.

It’s been four years since hurricanes Laura and Delta decimated Lake Charles in southwest Louisiana, and Malvo is still without plumbing. Unable to afford repairs without federal funds she fears will never arrive, Malvo remains in a crumbling home where the floor sags and wires poke from the ceiling.

In the midst of peak hurricane season, recovery continues at a creeping pace in a community the Weather Channel once called America’s “most weather-battered city.” Some residents in Lake Charles, a mostly Black city where one-fifth of the population live in poverty, are stuck in similar conditions as they were immediately following the 2020 hurricanes. They fear they’ve slipped through the cracks, even as some have been approved for federal funds but face a nearing deadline to close on their award or risk losing it.

While some homeowners continue to wait for financial relief, others are in legal limbo with insurance companies they say gravely underestimated their damage. Then there are those who simply cannot find housing, after the hurricanes destroyed apartment complexes and neighborhoods.

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