Louisiana Flood Victims Worry They Won't Have The Funds To Rebuild

Baton Rouge residents are starting to cleanup from historic floods that devastated parts of southern Louisiana. They are also starting to try to figure out how to pay for rebuilding.

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

After record flooding in Louisiana, people are starting to clean up. And they're confronting another challenge, how to pay for it. The Federal Emergency Management Agency offers a maximum of $33,000 per household. But as Jesse Hardman from member station WWNO reports, only around 13 percent of local families have flood insurance.

JESSE HARDMAN, BYLINE: As a former college quarterback at nearby Southern University and current high school football coach, 42-year-old Eric Randall is rarely missing a playbook. But with two cars and his home completely flooded out,fiscal territory.

RICHARDSON: You're looking at debt.

HARDMAN: Forty-five-year-old Baton Rouge resident Patrick Abadie is blowing big fans on algebra textbooks in an attempt to dry them. He pulls the protective mask down from his mouth to describe the smell of 10,000 books teeming with mold.

PATRICK ABADIE: Acrid, cloying, sticks with you, sticks on you, sticks to everything you have.

HARDMAN: Abadie is the librarian at Baker High School near Baton Rouge. And yesterday, he finally got into the building. Some students helped him pump a foot of water out of the library he's overseen for a decade. Then health inspectors gave their assessment.

ABADIE: Get out. So...

HARDMAN: The space was too toxic. Abadie not only lost the entire book collection. He lost 20 computers, valuable tools at a school where 90