'Hurricane Ida made landfall in Louisiana today.'
'Just beyond Highway 23, within Plaquemines Parish lies the small town of Ironton,
completely crippled by Hurricane Ida.'
'Ironton may have been the worst devastation that I've seen.'
'Ironton, a historically black community, continues to feel left behind in recovery efforts,
as homes remain condemned and tombs displaced.
This is what Ironton looked like in the aftermath of Hurricane Ida,
which hit the town in the fall of 2021.
The last storm that passed Ida, it devastated the community to a point where
I've never seen nothing like that in my entire life.
It was devastation, it was total chaos.
The storm completely devastated this small community in south-east Louisiana.
Now, the climate crisis is partly to blame because it's fuelling extreme rainfall
and more intense storm surges during hurricanes,
increasing the risk of flooding for communities like Ironton.
But residents say the level of destruction their town saw wasn't inevitable.
No one controlled the atmosphere of the hurricane,
but it could have been minimised.
This is the story of how Ironton's disaster was made
and how the very existence of this historic black community
now hangs in the balance.
This is my family cemetery.
My great, great, great grandmother actually was a slave.
I feel a closeness to the land as a result of that.
Audrey Trufant Salvant is a lifelong resident of ironton
and the fifth generation of her family that's lived there.
I feel the struggle that my ancestors endured
in order to secure property in this community.
I would never walk away from it.
Ironton was founded after the civil war by formerly enslaved people from nearby plantations,
and ever since the town has had to struggle just to get the basics —
things nearby white communities never even had to think about.
Whatever infrastructure that came into this community, it was a fight,
it wasn't just a given, it was a fight.
Residents fought for equal voting rights and school integration,
battling Leander Perez, a notorious segregationist
who ruled the parish with an iron fist.
In the 1980s and 90s, Ironton residents fought Perez's son
to bring basic services, like running water and a sewage system, to the town.
Audrey's mother and aunt where part of that fight.
This community have always been resilient and they always was warriors,
they always fought, they fought for everything.
And they're still fighting today, this time for flood protection.
They owe us this and I'm not saying that we are any different from anybody else,
but if you allow, by not building the levees and not protecting us
and allowing us to have to flood as many times as this community has flood, it's just unacceptable.
After hurricane Katrina in 2005, Congress funded a federal levee system,
protecting the greater New Orleans area from extreme flooding.
'The hurricane and storm damage risk-reduction system can now
defend against the effects of a 100-year storm.'
This is the extent of that federal levee system.
It stops just 11 miles north of Ironton, leaving the community reliant on a series of gulf side,
or back levees, to protect from storm surges.
These back levees were built decades ago with non-federal funds,
and they can't provide the same level of flood protection
as the federal ones to the north.
In fact, they can't even provide half the level of flood protection.
Here's how much Ironton flooded during hurricane Ida
and here's how an area with federal levees fared.
The levee section surrounding Ironton may be particularly vulnerable.
According to the New Republic, Leander Perez neglected to authorise levee protection for black areas of the parish.
Now, Congress also did fund upgrades to these back levees in the aftermath of Katrina
and many sections of the system have been improved since.
But not Ironton's.
I'm not saying that it's about race, but we're always last in the in the community — we were last to get water,
last to get sewage, you know, and and then it seems like we're last to get a levee.
Haywood Johnson Jr, pastor of Ironton's historic St Paul Missionary Baptist Church,
has seen the impact of this lack of protection first-hand.
This is the fellowship hall, this is where we gathered as a church.
The water was pretty high, the water was —
I would say the water was up to the window.
So everything in here was destroyed.
He's rebuilt the church not once, but twice before — after Katrina in 2005 and Isaac in 2012.
Now, after Ida, he's picking up the pieces yet again.
I think I'm the only preacher, the only pastor, that has had the experience of
rebuilding the streets three times in 16 years and, yet, I'm still upbeat.
We ain't going nowhere, we're going to come back and rebuild.
This is our heritage, this is our identity. Ironton's our identity
You know, when you lose your identity, you cease to exist.
Rebuilding Irontin won't be an easy feat.
Even though its levee project is now fully-funded,
it will take years to construct and until it's completed, the town remains vulnerable.
In the meantime, residents can technically rebuild their homes. But there's a catch.
Flood insurance is federally required in Ironton and, after Ida, residents must elevate their homes
by at least 12 feet in order to qualify, which is unaffordable for most community members.
You can't come back and place your house on the ground like pre-Ida, it has to be elevated.
So in order to meet the elevation,
can't everybody afford, the funding has to be in place.
And while community leaders are working on securing funds to make that possible, the process takes time.
Meanwhile, the historic community faces a different existential threat; industry buyouts.
'Did you or anyone from your administration
meet with this residents from Ironton about a buyout?
Did you approach any residents in Ironton about buying their houses or a buyout?
We were asked to come and speak to them, to families.
Community members and advocates say some residents have been approached with
offers to buy their land to build a rail line through Ironton.
We may not be able to stop them from building, but we can stop them from purchasing our land and moving our community.
I think it would just be a total slap in the face. A historic community has been in place for over 200 years
and for us to just walk away from that, I can't even imagine it.
Despite the challenges facing the community Ironton's past sparks hope for its future
The thing that gives me hope about the future of this places is all the battles that we have fought,
every last one of them, we always came out on the winning end.
Every last one of them.