Louisiana's poor left to face floodwater and snakes

But while Sheriff Mike Couvillion is relieved that lives have been saved, he is irritated that it has come to this.

As the search-and-rescue operation continues in the marshlands of southern Louisiana, with 50 per cent of this parish alone now under water and 50 people still to be accounted for, he cannot help wondering why he is doing what he is.

"They had a warning for three days to get out. They elected not to pay attention," he says, sitting in his emergency operations room in Abbeville, whose quaint streets are now busy with troops, military trucks and rescue vehicles towing boats. "All they can say now is, 'We've never seen anything like this. Who'd have thought it'd be this bad?'"

This is the heart of Cajun country, the soul of Louisiana. Displaced French settlers came here from Nova Scotia three centuries ago to start new lives as cattle ranchers, shrimpers, fishermen and farmers.

Last week, they had healthy fields of rice, sugar and livestock, and alligator farms. Now their homes, boats and land have been gulped down by the storm surge. Dead cattle float in the waterlogged fields. The cane is submerged.

Oscar Abshire's predecessors were among the first to settle here in the 1760s. His surname was the first recorded Cajun name in Louisiana. "We just kind of have this attitude about life - we celebrate it, we dance at funerals, we love our music," Mr Abshire says.

"It's not a mean or cruel culture; it's bright and positive. But when you see something like this ... man, does it test that?"

The water rose so fast that those who watched it thundering towards their homes had no time to flee.

Lieutenants Greg Hebert and Ronnie Stelly, of Vermilion Sheriff's department, were among those who took to boats to try to fetch people from the roofs of houses and tractors. It proved a near-death experience, as the force of the water leaned into their boat and marsh grass clogged the motor.

"One minute the water was up to our boots and in a few minutes it was up to our chests," Lt Stelly said. "It was unbelievable. We weren't gaining headway - we were losing ground."

They headed for a line of trees but found they were not the only ones to seek refuge there. "Every snake for miles around had got to that tree line. They were on every limb - thousands of them, every breed, every colour, venomous, non-venomous," Lt Hebert said. "We were going to have to fight the snakes or fight the water. There was no land left anywhere."

They knocked a snake away and, still in their boat, clung to a branch. Army engineers later picked them up.

Nicholas Lee, 17, lived with his brothers, Christopher, 19, and Travis, 12, in a trailer in the community of Delcambre. They and their mother went to their grandmother's trailer when the storm blew in, but in the middle of the night water poured in through both ends of their street, trapping them. They were rescued by a sheriff's boat.

"You could hear the trailer shaking and then the water was gushing in real fast," Nicholas said. "We had nowhere to go and we have no family - this is our family. That's why we'd stayed. We're dead broke."

Rayman Thibodeaux, a marine patrol officer with the sheriff's department, said: "People have roots here. When you tell them to evacuate and stay with family, they just move to the trailer two blocks down - because that is their family."

Sheila Cox, 55, from Henry, a rural community just south of Abbeville, returned to find her home had been knocked off its foundations.

Her life's possessions - the grandfather clock that had been handed down through her family, antique crystal, her grandchildren's dolls - had been crushed in a carpet of wet mud.

As she salvaged photographs of her granddaughters, tears streamed down her cheeks.

"It's hard to contemplate starting over," she said. "I'm a nothing and a nobody now."