Slidell, La. -
Several small communities off Old Spanish Trail in Slidell continue the long process of cleaning up after Hurricane Isaac.
Just off Highway 433 outside Slidell, life tends to be a bit slower.
"It's just something alluring about living by the water," said resident Conrad Vaillancourt.
The highway was under at least four feet of water after Isaac's storm surge. It took two days for the tide to go down.
"The worst winds were coming from this way, pushing stuff into the marsh, and the fence just acted like a funnel, and it just brought everything this way," said Vaillancourt.
One week later, people who live there continue to clean up after the Category 1 storm caught them by surprise.
"Got about four and a half feet, and that's when we started noticing a few snakes, and rodents and wild life and stuff like that," said Vaillancourt.
Vaillancourt and his 90-year-old father rode out Isaac in their home, just nine feet off the ground. At one point, he didn't know if the water was going to stop rising.
"I started to get scared about 1:00 that night, I said, man that tide is still coming up, the tide was still coming up. I said, oh man, what do I do. We always got the attic just like everybody else, you know, horror story with the attic, but we got lucky, you can see the water line there, that's as high as it got," said Vaillancourt, pointing to his fence.
80-year-old E.J. Brugier is trying to get the siding on his home replaced before nightfall. He and his wife returned from Jackson, Miss. after the worst of Isaac passed.
"Everybody is aggravated," said Brugier. "Most everybody down here has got more damage than I do, so I can't cry. They've got roof damage, and people got water in their house, that's bad. I didn't get any of that."
Vaillancourt says he's just thankful water didn't get into his home this time. He says Hurricane Katrina put about 40 inches of water inside.
"This stuff don't bother me, we didn't get water in the house, that's the main thing," said Vaillancourt as he continued to cope with debris. "Clean up, pick up the pieces, and move on."
Meanwhile, several communities near the Rigolets, including Pirates Harbor, Treasure Isle, and the Rigolets Estates, appear to have weathered Isaac better than Hurricane Katrina.
