“But the worst storms were where somebody lost their house and didn’t come back.”

- Chris Burnet, island resident

Growing up, Brunet remembers a hard-hitting storm every 10 years or so, usually between late August and mid-September. There was Betsy in 1965, Carmen in 1973, Juan in 1985, Andrew in 1992, Lili in 2002. Then, about a decade ago, the island was hit hard more frequently, sometimes in pairs delivering one-two punches, as in 2005 with Katrina and Rita and in 2008 with Gustav and Ike.

“They were all bad,” Brunet says. “But the worst storms were where somebody lost their house and didn’t come back.”

Brunet holds a personal grudge against Hurricane Carmen, because about 40 years ago, Carmen sent its storm surge into the house of Albert and Patsy Naquin, when the two were still newlyweds.

Brunet’s family had been intertwined with Naquin’s since day one, when Brunet’s mother, a midwife, attended to Naquin’s birth. The two men are inseparably tight friends who talk with each other at least once a day. As is the way of the island, the two are also kin – second cousins – and they are somehow related to nearly everyone else on the island, most of whom carry the same handful of surnames: Brunet, Naquin, Chaisson, Billiot, and Dardar. Most are members of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribe, though a few are associated with other tribes.

In 1965, the Naquin family house was irreparably damaged by Betsy. Then, in 1973, Albert and Patsy Naquin returned to their brand new house after Carmen. “There was almost an inch of mud left inside,” says Albert Naquin, now 69. “All of our new appliances and furniture were ruined.” For him, it was time to leave.

He didn’t go far. No one does. “They always move in the area, usually 10 or 15 minutes away,” Brunet says.

Not long after he moved, Naquin became chief of the Isle de Jean Charles band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, following in the footsteps of his brother, uncle, grandfather and great grandfather.

As part of his role as chief and de facto historian, Naquin keeps a running census in his head. The population of Isle de Jean Charles reached its peak a few decades ago, he says, when it reached roughly 400 people. Even 20 years ago, the island still had 78 families with more than 300 people. At various times there was also a church, a one-room schoolhouse and small grocery stores.

But the storms have continued to take their toll, according to Naquin’s informal census. After Lili, 10 families moved away, bringing the household count down to 68. After Katrina and Rita, 14 more families left. Down to 54. In 2008, after Gustav and Ike, the vicious storms that flipped their neighbor Mary’s house upside-down, 29 families left, leaving the island with 25 families. Over the past few years, two new, unrelated families have nudged the number of households up to 27, by creating homes out of a few of the island’s cluster of rustic “camps” – fishing cabins on stilts – that stand on one end of the island.

Between storms, the day-to-day hurdles were no picnic either. That’s what ultimately proved too much for Rebecca Billiot Dardar, who left Isle de Jean Charles nearly 20 years ago, in 1998.

She thinks back to her island days with fondness, living next door to relatives who gathered for coffee every day at 3 p.m. and flanked by aunties and uncles who doted on everyone around them. On Sunday afternoons, they all played cards. And on holidays, people walked from house to house, visiting each other.

But in the mornings when Dardar woke and saw water in her yard, she knew that the segment of Island Road that connects the island to the mainland would also be covered with water. She and her neighbors attended many Terrebonne Parish council meetings, arguing that this narrow, two-lane section of asphalt road – first completed in 1954 – should be significantly raised and strengthened. But little was done.

Since Dardar left, it’s gotten worse, because it only takes a strong wind for the road to close. But the patterns are the same. Most often, the road is covered with water in the fall, when the south winds blow. Sometimes in the spring too. On those days, there’s no school for the island’s kids, because the school district doesn’t allow its buses to cross to the island if there is water on the road. Too often, it also means no work, for one day or for three, as long as the water was there. If the water is shallow enough, island drivers will go through the saltwater, determined to get to work, though salt can quickly ruin a car’s undercarriage.

After 12 years on the island, Dardar reached her limit, like Albert Naquin and so many before her. Faced with too many missed workdays and hassles, she had to pull up stakes and move off the island, in order to survive.

To this day, when big storms approach, the road seems to vanish. Dardar vividly remembers that, from a night in 1985.

It wasn’t until October of that year – late for hurricanes – that Hurricane Juan began building in the Gulf of Mexico and moving along an erratic route, that eventually circled through Louisiana twice, causing widespread flooding. One afternoon, Dardar and her husband decided that Juan had gotten large enough that they should evacuate with their 6-month-old daughter. It was after nightfall when they finished packing and left the house, him driving one car; her driving right behind him in the other.

By the time they got to Island Road, the road was underwater, with water high enough that it flowed into car doors.

Earlier that night, another family’s car had stalled on the road. The family got out but no one could push the car to higher ground before the tide took it. That night, Chris Brunet, who also evacuated late, recalled driving past on Island Road with the car standing up in the nearby water, drifting away.

It was frightening, but there was no other way. Her husband eased his car onto the watery road and she crept behind him, as they drove into a mass of waves and water.

“All I could see was his taillights,” she remembers. “The road was covered with water and the storm was coming in, so it was pouring down rain.”

As the wipers beat a fast rhythm on her windshield, she prayed fervently for their daughter in the infant seat behind her and focused her eyes on the pair of red lights ahead of her, as the lights led her through the water and, eventually, onto the mainland.