On the Tuesday after Harvey hit Texas, he showed up at the Costco in Baton Rouge, where the Cajun Navy had organized their base of operations on a picnic bench in front of the store.īen and his father spent their first day driving supplies like water and diapers to Houston. This year he and his father were spared by Harvey, so Ben did what he always does when a storm comes: loaded up his boat and went to see where he could be of service. And then last year, his father’s church in Robert, Louisiana, was flooded-news he personally delivered to his father after discovering the damage. He’d never worked a storm until Hurricane Katrina, when his unit was deployed as security for a company that removed bodies from houses. Volunteer rescuers arrived soon after the storm hit, with flat-bottomed boats normally used for navigating the bayous now repurposed to maneuver around the submerged streets, bringing desperately needed supplies and, in the absence of first responders, ferrying stranded people to safety.īen Husser is one of those Cajuns: a native of Hammond, Louisiana, who has served in the Air National Guard for almost three decades. In August, when Hurricane Harvey made landfall, dropping 50 inches of rain and flooding 28,000 square miles around Houston in three days, the people of Louisiana raised a vigilante armada, the Cajun Navy, to come to the aid of their neighbors in Texas.
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