Skip to content Skip to footer
|

Holiday Melancholy in Bayou Corne, Louisiana, Home of Giant Sinkhole Caused by an Industrial Accident

Bayou Corne has joined the growing list of communities destroyed by industrial accidents.

Tim Brown's Christmas decorations at his home in Bayou Corne. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)

Hand-painted standing alligators holding signs that read “Noel” on Tim Brown’s lawn in Bayou Corne, LA, offer holiday cheer in an area where most of his neighbors moved away.

Bayou Corne, 77 miles west of New Orleans, has joined the growing list of communities destroyed by industrial accidents.

Once known as a sportsman’s paradise, Bayou Corne is now famous for a giant sinkhole that opened up on August 3, 2012, after a salt dome cavern, owned by Occidental Chemical Corp. and operated by Texas Brine Co. LLC, collapsed.

Tim Brown on Sportsman Drive with one of his dogs. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)Tim Brown on Sportsman Drive with one of his dogs. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)

Street sign in Brown's backyard that he saved after the north side of Bayou Corne emptied out. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)Street sign in Brown’s backyard that he saved after the north side of Bayou Corne emptied out. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)

Texas Brine, the petrochemical company held responsible for the giant sinkhole, has settled with most of the 350 residents, buying them out of their homes. Only ten homes remain occupied, including the Browns.

They are all on Sportsman’s Drive on the south side of Bayou Corne. The north side’s only remaining residents are dozens of stray cats.

Brown’s lawn art model of the sinkhole, photographed by DeSmog and many other media sources covering the story, is no longer on his front lawn, but a sign equating the sinkhole with a stink-hole remains behind his brightly painted alligators sculptures.

A model of the sinkhole by Tim Brown on his front lawn in 2013. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)A model of the sinkhole by Tim Brown on his front lawn in 2013. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)

Brown and his wife chose not to heed the mandatory evacuation orders that came hours after the sinkhole was discovered. And they are glad they chose to stay because the area is still paradise to them. But both told DeSmog they are sad most of their neighbors are gone.

It is lonely back here,” Brown said.

Not everyone who joined the class action lawsuit realized they had to turn over their homes to get their share of the settlement. Though they got back the value of their homes in settlements, now that the sinkhole is thought to have stabilized and the explosive levels of methane gas released by the sinkhole no longer pose an imminent threat, some wish they could have stayed.

However, home values for those who did stay remain at zero dollars due to continued uncertainty about the situation.

Mike Schaff, a former resident who moved out of his home on the north side of Bayou Corne, now deserted except for one fishing camp, is still saddened by the experience. He has been back a couple times and describes the area as a ghost town.

Mike Schaff at his home in Bayou Corne before he moved out. (Photo: ©2014 Julie Dermansky)Mike Schaff at his home in Bayou Corne before he moved out. (Photo: ©2014 Julie Dermansky)

Mike Schaff’s former home on December 13, 2015. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)Mike Schaff’s former home on December 13, 2015. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)

Since the last remaining residents cleared out of the North side earlier this year, the neighborhood started to decay. Vandals broke into many of the homes, leaving windows and doors ajar.

Sportsman’s Drive is in much better shape. But the Browns worry whether Texas Brine will continue the upkeep of the unoccupied properties as promised. They have already had to push the company to make sure the yards are maintained.

Empty home on the north side of Bayou Corne. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)Empty home on the north side of Bayou Corne. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)

Empty home on the north side of Bayou Corne. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)Empty home on the north side of Bayou Corne. (Photo: ©2015 Julie Dermansky)

The area is still breathtakingly beautiful,” Victoria Greene, a filmmaker wrapping up work on a documentary about Bayou Corne, told DeSmog.

Over the last couple of years she has grown to understand the saying used by many she interviewed for her film: “If you never lived on the bayou you can’t understand what you missed.”

Watch the trailer of Greene’s upcoming film, Forgotten Bayou: Life on the Sinkhole.

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy