of the REVIVAL FITTEST

A strong sense of community helps Denham Springs rebound from disaster

BY GARY PERILLOUX

AT 4 A.M., THE RISING waters lap at Dr. Ed Hood’s mailbox. He’s driving a pickup with his 89-year-old father riding shotgun, a new tractor, trailer in tow. His wife, Gwen, follows in their car. As they hit River Road, the swollen Amite River blurs the lines between road and ditch. Other drivers have found the ditch.

Hood and his family press on, praying they’ll reach his Hood Dental Care clinic on Veterans Boulevard, where his crowned lot has never flooded.

But this is the Great Flood of 2016, and it’s unlike anything anyone has ever seen. The home of Hood’s father—a vintage pier-and-beam house—didn’t flood in 1977 or 1983 or 1991. But by the time nearly 30 inches of rain fell that fateful August weekend, the floorboards of Elgene Hood Sr.’s house buckled under the weight of water. Like three of every four homes in

Denham Springs, his dentist son’s home also succumbed to the flood.

Some 2,363 days later, Dr. Ed Hood revisits the epic flood in his renovated dental office. The clinic that never flooded took on 2.5 feet of water. Deeper water in the parking lot destroyed vehicles. He lost $1.5 million in equipment at 13 operating stations, where sensitive electronics nested in the base of dental chairs. By the end of 2016, he’d lose another $1.5 million in business due to closure, he’d lose over half his staff, and for nearly a year he and his family lived in his father’s new doublewide mobile home while restoring their own homes.

Yet a surprising trend surfaced from the flood: Out of survival, came revival. Applying his business acumen, Hood opened new dental offices in Watson and Livingston while acquiring a pair of

Zachary clinics from former classmates. Hood Dental Care has grown from one clinic, three dentists and 28 employees before the flood to five clinics, nine dentists and 78 employees today.

“Nobody here was sitting around waiting for the government to step in and bail us out of this situation,” Hood says. “People just pulled together and went and helped each other rip out Sheetrock. It’s a tight-knit community.”

Today, rebirth is a common refrain across Denham Springs. Over time, federal and state efforts paid significant dividends. Within a year, FEMA supplied $8.5 million for debris removal in the city. More grants protected the electrical components of sewer lift stations, water pumps and other infrastructure. City Hall, which occupied three different sites in 2016, now resides downtown in a former Capitol One Bank branch that is among the few structures that didn’t flood. Denham Springs is participating in the $1.2 billion Louisiana Watershed Initiative, which includes drainage improvements across Livingston Parish and a $10 million home buyout project in the city’s high-risk Spring Park neighborhood west of River Road. Floodwaters are never far from anyone’s mind.

“We live it. We talk about the flood every single day,” says Rick Foster, city building official. “I can tell you this: It’s a line item for us now.”

Among the city’s 180-person staff are employees dedicated to monitoring and maintaining drainage structures. An action plan begins with every forecast of heavy rain. Over 50 city employees have traveled to Emmitsburg, Maryland, to study at FEMA’s National Emergency Training Center.

Yet Mayor Gerard Landry agrees with Hood that, in the beginning, the quality that rekindled rebirth in Denham Springs ran deeper than disaster dollars.

“Community involvement was the key to recovery,” Landry said. “When you have a disaster, neighbors help neighbors, family helps family and friends help friends. It was that community spirit and everyone willing to work together to give us the road map of what they wanted to see in the recovery.”

Reopening restaurants fueled recovery in the first weeks. Then, schools and churches came to the fore. Hood recalls his flooded First Baptist Church sharing facilities with nearby First United Methodist Church, then moving to the Denham Springs Junior High cafeteria for 18 months. That bought time for First Baptist to build a new campus on 44 acres along Pete’s Highway, where membership has tripled.

Superintendent Joe Murphy of Livingston Parish Public Schools will never forget another church gesture. Immaculate Conception Catholic Church offered an open-ended, zero-dollar lease that would last five years on Hatchell Lane while a new Denham Springs Elementary School was funded and built.

“We cannot thank the church enough for what they did,” Murphy says. “They gave 500 children a home when they had no other place to go.”

After the flood, Denham Springs High students shared space with Live Oak High in Watson for one semester before returning to their school. However, Southside Junior High and Southside Elementary occupied temporary buildings for six years at Juban Parc Junior High and Juban Parc Elementary. Eventually, federal officials granted $67 million for a new Denham Springs Elementary and a 185,000-squarefoot Southside Junior High and Elementary School campus built on 2,200 pilings along La. 16—nearly 10 feet higher than the old junior high.

Of $100 million spent reopening Livingston Parish schools, the district spent $95 million in the Denham Springs area.

“When we started, it was all about a building,” Murphy says of the Denham Springs recovery. “But I came to the conclusion that while a building is necessary, it is really about the people. I will never forget that life lesson, ever.”

By 2017, U.S. Census data showed Livingston Parish retail spending approaching $1.5 billion. More than 90 percent of the Denham Springs population has returned, and the city’s reputation as a retail hub is stronger than ever: For the fiscal year ending June 2023, Denham Springs is on track to collect $12.6 million in sales taxes, or 68 percent more than just five years ago.

“God is good,” says Hood, the dentist. “And all of the things that we had to go through—I didn’t like it any more than anybody else. But if you have an abundance mindset, and you’re not ‘woe is me’ and having a scarcity mindset, you just feel like those things are going to work out for the better. On August 12 of 2016, I would never have dreamed that I would be where I am today.” 

Denham Springs is on track to collect $12.6 million in sales taxes, or 68 percent more than just five years ago, showing a surging retail industry. The Denham Springs Antiques Village, a popular shopping destination for locals and tourists alike, has recovered after suffering devastating losses.