More frequent floods force hard family decisions in Lafourche Parish enclave

Lafourche Parish resident Diana Tregle Loupe saw her house flood for the second time in three years due to storms. Hurricane Francine made landfall Wednesday Sept. 11, 2024. (Photo by Julie O'Donoghue/Louisiana Illuminator)

THIBODAUX – Over her 65 years of living in the small community of Bayou Boeuf in eastern Lafourche Parish, Diana Tregle Loupe has seen it flood just three times.

First, when she was 9 years old, the Louisiana National Guard came to rescue folks. The second time was in 2021 when Hurricane Ida tore up south Louisiana, and the latest came Wednesday night during Hurricane Francine.

That’s two floods in the past three years of her life – and just one in the previous 62.

During Ida, a Category 4 storm, the flood water got so high that it entered her house and topped Loupe’s bathtub. For Francine, it was about a foot less, she said, but still distressing.

Loupe is unlikely to leave though.

“Where else are you going to go?” she said Thursday during an interview in her backyard.

Her home isn’t so much a residence, as it is a sprawling swamp compound at the center of this community. She has more than a dozen of stone tables and benches in the front yard. At the back of the property, her husband Lloyd looks after a small zoo with horses, a goat, an enormous snapping turtle and alligators ranging from 1-14 feet long.

Diana inherited the property from her parents, and it’s across the street from Zam’s Swamp Tours. One of the first of its kind in Louisiana, the business was started by her mother decades ago and is now run by her son .

The Loupes might not be willing to leave Bayou Beouf, but that doesn’t mean other residents in this tight-knit community aren’t considering a change after increasingly frequent natural disasters.

This small enclave of houses on the outskirts of Thibodaux is also called Kraemer. It is almost entirely surrounded by a bayou that dumps into Lac des Allemands. With Spanish moss and skiff boats to spare, Bayou Beouf almost looks like a Hollywood mockup of a Louisiana swamp. In fact, it was the backdrop for an episode of NCIS: New Orleans in 2014.

The ambiance is what convinced Andrew and Mirna Ellis to move here 12 years ago. Andrew, who grew up in Prairieville, loves the water and hunting. Bayou Boeuf is also close to his job. He’s an engineer who works for a boat building company.

Two floods in three years have been difficult, however. During Ida, the family got 14 inches of water in their home. This week during Francine, about 2 inches of water came into two bedrooms at the back of their house.

“It is what it is. You just have to change out the floors,” Mirna Ellis said.

A combination of parish government employees, incarcerated people and volunteers worked diligently Thursday morning to erect a sand barrier and keep more water from invading the homes of the Ellises and their neighbors. The bayou’s high tide comes at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, meaning the flooding could have continued.

“It’s been awhile since I’ve seen this much water come over the road,” said Maj. J.P. deGravelles with the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office, who was helping to oversee the sand operation.

Andrew Ellis was taken aback when Bayou Boeuf took on water Wednesday during Francine, a Category 2 storm. After Ida, which was a much stronger hurricane, the local levee system was upgraded.

“We thought we would be more protected,” he said.

The Ellises are also dealing with the traumatic death of a family pet this week.

On Tuesday, as Francine brewed out in the Gulf of Mexico, a large alligator came out of the swamp near the Ellis’ house and snatched their 9-year-old Boykin Spaniel in front of their toddler son.

“Our dog got taken … partly due to high water” that encouraged the alligator to come out of the bayou, Andrew Ellis said.

Leslie Martinez grew up in the house next to the Ellises and came to check on her childhood home where her mother still lives.

A raised structure, the main home didn’t flood this week, but an enclosed carport at the front of the building took on a few inches of water. They call that carport the “church house” because Martinez’s father used to run a church mission out of it when she was growing up.

She doesn’t remember the house ever flooding before 2021, when Ida hit.

“We sat in water in Ida. We sat in water all night long,” Martinez said.

The Ida flood is part of the reason Martinez’s elderly mother evacuated to Chackbay, a few miles up the road, ahead of Francine. It may also keep Martinez from coming back to Bayou Boeuf with her own family.

“We thought about moving back, but with these two hurricanes, we’re not moving back,” Martinez’s husband, Claude, said after he locked up  his mother-in-law’s  front door.