Louisiana — Clair Hebert Marceaux, her husband and their dog, Sugar,  drove up a water-filled road in the days after powerful Category 4 Hurricane Laura pummeled southwestern Louisiana to  their home  of nine years.

Sugar, a Labrador retriever and boxer mix, was making a singing sound after finally coming home to Cameron Parish following a mandatory evacuation because of the life-threatening storm, but when they pulled up, she suddenly stopped and no longer wanted to get out of the car. Hebert Marceaux screamed and cried.

Her 1,800-square-foot house, once the color of sandstone with brick-red shutters, was gone except for a slab. Not even the frame remained. Three alligators swam in the water that completely filled her yard. 

“I was sad and I was heartbroken and angry that so many people are in the same circumstance and I can’t do anything to help them,” Hebert Marceaux, 43, the port director of Cameron Parish, said from atop the slab of her home in late October, where storm surge water behind the property could still be seen, two months after the  hurricane leveled her home.

“I don’t want anybody to feel sorry for me, but it’s really rough being on your hands and knees in boots trying to find something that looks like your life,” she said.

Scattered around the road are pieces of the life Hebert Marceaux once had: a washer and a dryer, a red sweatshirt belonging to her son, a refrigerator door. 

“I mean that’s my Crock-Pot right there, that’s so messed up,” she said, her voice breaking as she gestured around the debris surrounding the remains of her home. “A lot of people don’t know what to do next. I just want to come home.

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