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Four years after Hurricane Gustav, the same wall attached to the same daiquiri shop in Thibodaux suffered the same fate.
A crumpled heap of aluminum, plywood, insulation and siding laid motionless at the corner of the now-gaping Norm’s Daiquiris and Grill on Friday after Hurricane Isaac, which seemed to leave all neighboring structures unharmed, detached the front wall and left it in shambles.
“Here we are back again,” manager Cecelia Aucoin said. “It’s sickening.”
Gustav’s impact was felt throughout the area. Damage had to be repaired, and out-of-parish contractors came in to lend a hand. In 2008, Norm’s responded to the storm by closing off half the building and reopening. It took one year before a company based in Lafayette completed work restoring the front wall, Aucoin said.
This time the plan remains the same. Norm’s, which walled off the opening with a sheet of Visqueen across two of the three standing walls, reopened its drive-through window on Sunday.
Employees took advantage of the downtime on Friday to give the daiquiri machines a thorough cleansing. Surfboards, neon signs and hanging portraits that had fallen from the damaged wall were piled inside. Aucoin said she has watched security footage of the wall bucking and collapsing multiple times.
The Thibodaux Police Department informed Aucoin of the damage moments after it happened. The alarm system was still blaring when the 50-year-old manager arrived to survey the scene herself.
Hurricane Isaac moved through the Tri-parish region with sustained winds measured up to 80 mph, and as much as 14 inches of rain flooding low lying areas.
The Category 1 storm was also blamed for scattered but limited structural damage, according to Houma Police Chief Todd Duplantis.
“We really didn’t have much building damage overall,” Duplantis said. The police chief observed that tree limbs had brought down electrical lines and some residents remained without service into the weekend, but most businesses fared well.
The only two Terrebonne Parish businesses that reported significant structural losses were Carsmiths Automotive, at 6178 W. Main St., and Dillard’s Department Store in Southland Mall, at 5953 W. Park Ave.
Carsmiths Automotive owner Wayne Folse said he believed tornado activity was to blame for destruction at his business.
Carsmiths is located next to the Bayou Cane Fire Department. While structures neighboring the auto-repair shop were unharmed, storm damage early Wednesday morning resulted in loss of a roof and collapsed walls at the location.
“It evidently was a tornado that passed through,” Folse said. “I saw [the damage Wednesday] morning when I came up.”
Terrebonne Parish Emergency Management Director Earl Eues said he only had one unconfirmed report of a tornado associated with Isaac and that was in Schriever. There was no conclusive evidence to support the claimed twister. “I don’t know what happened there,” he said of the Carsmiths incident.
Bayou Cane Fire Protection District Chief Ken Himel said two crews were hunkered-down at the fire station during the hurricane and none of his men heard or saw evidence of a tornado. “In fact the sleeping quarters are on that side of our building so somebody would have heard something,” Himel said. “[Carsmiths] is an old building. The wind was out of the north that night and I suspect it caught the [car] bays and took off the roof.”
Although the structure suffered damage, no vehicles were harmed, Folse said. “The roof blew off, not in,” he said. “[The building] is old wood, but it would have had to be a tornado the way it blew a rafter on the next house.”
Folse said he intended to begin cleanup during the weekend and be open for business again within September.
Himel also reported his department responding to a fire alarm sounding at Dillard’s while the storm stalled over Houma. Upon arrival, firefighters found that water was the issue when roof damage to the three-story structure caused a cascade of rain flowing floor-to-floor on the building’s westside interior.
“The damage was on all three floors,” Dillard’s assistant store manager Rebecca Jones said Friday. “We have a team here already extracting stuff and starting repairs.”
Jones said Dillard’s is open for business and has blocked areas where construction is taking place. “No one except [repair and construction] workers are in there. We have it all blocked off for customer and our associate safety.”
In an email message, South Central Industrial Association Executive Director Jane Arnette said businesses that have sustained damage from Hurricane Isaac can contact a committee of business owners and agencies designed to offer assistance.
“If your business needs assistance in the aftermath of this storm, please contact … (281) 840-5823,” Arnette said. “This committee is independent of SCIA … [but] has developed a logistics communications hub to assist businesses following a natural disaster.”
Aluminum, plywood, insulation and other debris lays where the front wall of Norm’s Daquiris and Grill used to stand. The wall last fell four years ago during Hurricane Gustav. The Thibodaux shop was among Tri-parish area businesses to suffer damages as Hurricane Isaac blew through last week.
