THAT NIGHT WE FOUND a place to crash with a friend of a friend at a generic apartment building hit hard by the winds. The metal security gate had been twisted away, so we drove through, one unit indistinguishable from the next. No lights on in any of the apartments. Up ahead, Larry pointed to a backhoe chugging away, and I slowed. Two shirtless white guys emerged. One carried a TV set, and both squinted like feral animals, wild-eyed and bristly-bearded and sunburned, as they walked toward the Jeep.

"Excuse me," Larry called out. "Sir? I'm a journalist from Canada and I'm lost."

Shit.

Wrecked boats in Grand Isle, Louisiana. (Larry Towell)

They ambled over. The guy carrying the television put it down near the backhoe. The other craned his head into the passenger-side window.

"Y'all can't be in here," he said. "I don't care who you are. No one suppose' to be in here."

I whispered, "Let me talk."

I did my best to translate in High Redneck. They soon grinned—and, I believe, spat—and led the way to the apartment on their backhoe. Larry asked what they had been doing.

"You know," one man said. "Survival of the fittest."