Sonny Corley, DVM, of Acadiana Equine Clinic in Lafayette, La., climbed a fence to leave another note Tuesday night on the door of the clinic belonging to Johnny Reina, DVM, in Lake Charles, La. He had visited the hurricane-damaged site three days in a row and hadn’t caught up with Reina yet. Interrupted phone services are just one symptom of the general disarray following Hurricane Rita’s strike on the area Saturday, Sept. 24.
 
“His clinic is not as bad as Dr. (Larry) Findley’s practice over in Vinton, who lost everything,” said Corley. “The roof is gone on off of all (Findley’s) barns, his clinic, everything.” Findley was planning to build a new clinic, so that will happen sooner than expected, but he has no place to work in the meantime.

The remains of Findley’s clinic stand next to the Delta Downs racetrack, which also took a beating during Rita. “I haven’t been on the backside because there are no horses there,” Corley said, “but when I went by, I saw that there is not one barn that is untouched, and all have the roofs down.”
“Vinton probably took the hardest hit of any place east of the Sabine River (which divides Louisiana and Texas),” he added.

Echoing the statements of other veterinarians on Rita’s impact, Corley said, “This is not going to be like Katrina, because there’s not the standing water. The real detriment and the thing that slows you down is water. But here (in southwestern Louisiana) the water can come, but it can’t stay. It’s a function of elevation–especially down in Vermilion Parish and Cameron Parish, the water can come up but it goes back with the tide as soon as the storm surge is pushed on. In New Orleans, the water can’t go away.”

But he says the wind damage makes Rita just as severe as Katrina. “There are trees knocked over and of course sheet metal on barns that the wind eats right up,” he said. “Trees are down, power lines are down, which translates to–especially in the rural environment–people not having electricity to run the water well