In the lowlands of St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, Hurricane Katrina hit hard. Crescent City was flooded but St. Bernard was drowned. In some places, the saltwater rose twenty feet and ninety-five percent of all buildings experienced catastrophical flooding. Bayou folk, including Cajuns, Creoles,and French Indians like the Verdins, and descendants of Spanish pioneers who call themselves the Islenos, have lived and worked here for centuries, and are now struggling to retrieve their way of life. Since 2005, Monique Verdin and her family have attended Save the Coast meetings and her husband manages a plant nursery that propagates hurricane-hardened oak trees and other species to help restore and stabilize critical wetlands. They also are putting their faith in the twenty-three-mile long, thirty-two foot levee system that was built atop the scraped away seventeen-foot levees that failed in Katrina.
