Towns across Louisiana were burgeoning with evacuees. The city of Lafayette, for instance, population 110,000, took in 40,000 of them. Many, if not most, stayed with friends or relatives. It was not unusual for a family of four to take in eleven people. Had the hurricane been only a very bad storm, that might have been akin to a holiday gathering for the hosts and guests alike. But Katrina was a vicious and unending disintegration of society’s fabric. According to academics such as Carl A. Brasseaux, a professor of history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, the family networks that had remained strong in Louisiana were more important than any government aid in helping to ease the impact of the disaster. “If family structures in Louisiana,” he said, “had eroded to the point they have in many parts of the country, many refugees here would face a very long and bleak road ahead.”
The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast by Douglas Brinkley. HarperCollins 2007. p. 434, 435
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