Broadmoor, Sherwood hit hard

• By STEVEN WARD
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Sep 9, 2008 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

The roof on the Broadmoor house 19-year-old Luke Caballero grew up in was relatively new.

Caballero, his father and stepmother were forced to get the roof three years ago after a tree fell on it when Hurricane Katrina swept through south Louisiana.

Hurricane Gustav was much less forgiving than Katrina on their roof.

A giant red oak from the front yard fell right on top of Caballeroes’ home, crushing the carport, the two vehicles under it, and the home’s kitchen.

Large chunks of the tree pierced the roof and stabbed and pounded the refrigerator.

“You should have seen the dust. It was so cloudy in here,” Luke Caballero recalled Monday, one week after Gustav roared through Baton Rouge.

“You could hear the branches cracking and then one loud ‘Boom,’ ” Caballero said.

Two days ago, the Caballeros moved from their Goodwood Avenue and Frances Harriet Avenue home into a condominium.

Unlike their destroyed Broadmoor home, the condominium has power.

“It’s very strange when you realize you can’t go back home and get into your normal routine,” Caballero said.

Broadmoor along with neighborhoods such as Old Goodwood and Sherwood Forest were some of the hardest hit areas in the parish.

The combination of old trees, old homes and old power lines created a perfect storm of circumstances that had most of those areas without power Monday, a week since the storm hit.

Monday afternoon, Broadmoor was filled with Entergy trucks swarming the streets in the neighborhood with workers trying to get power up and running for residents.