Hell or High Water: How Cajun Fortitude Withstood Hurricanes Rita and Ike

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No, this was Hurricane Rita, the other Louisiana disaster of 2005. Rita clobbered communities across the entire 250-mile coastal foundation of Acadiana, America's one-of-a-kind Cajun country. From one end of the Louisiana coast to another, towns were flooded, populations were left homeless and without public services, and communities were all but wiped off the map. As soon as Rita trailed off the National Weather Service radar, though, it also disappeared from the American consciousness. While New Orleans remained headline news, the communities hit so hard by Rita were all but forgotten and left to fend for themselves. But fend they did. Members of this predominantly Cajun population did what their Acadian forebears had done for centuries before them: adapt, survive, thrive in hostile environments.