BATON ROUGE, La. — Imagine everything you own, dunked in dirty water and mounded on the curb outside your house. Old VHS tapes, the piano, the wardrobe, the family photos. The water came up so quickly you couldn’t save anything. Now, imagine the same thing at the house next door and the one across the street. All the way down the block and the block after that. Ramparts of debris, piled head-high in front of every home. That’s how things look right now across whole neighborhoods of Baton Rouge and the surrounding counties, or parishes as they’re called in Louisiana. It’s all the more breathtaking because it wasn’t supposed to happen here. This isn’t below-sea level New Orleans caught in the path of a hurricane. This is the high-and-dry state capital. This is where people fled after Hurricane Katrina, and, ironically, where many stayed, thinking they were finally out of harm’s way.
Source: In Louisiana, the Political Mess May Outlast the Flood – POLITICO Magazine