Louisiana residents breathe sigh of relief after Tropical Storm Cindy

CAMERON, Louisiana (KTRK) -- Holly Beach is a quiet Gulf town made up of mostly fishermen and vacationers. There are three streets lined with bright-colored houses on stilts with boats underneath. But in between those new builds with fancy decks, you'll find concrete slabs: reminders of what Holly Beach once was.

"We've been through a couple bad ones," said Heath Jinks, a volunteer firefighter for Holly Beach and Johnson Bayou, which is down the road.

When Hurricane Rita hit in 2005, it took out the entire town. Less than 500 people live here and most of them lost everything.

"Total destruction," Jinks said. "Compared to then, this is nothing."

When Cindy made landfall early Thursday morning, Jinks felt relief.

"It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be," he said.

Because waking up to flooded streets is nothing for people around here.

"They still have their homes, you know? That's when people get crippled, when they don't have a place to go home to, you know?" Jinks said.

Rachel Rice, on the other hand, was a little worried. She's not a native. She's a marine biologist, living at Holly Beach for only a few months.

"The wind was pretty intense. I'd never been part of a storm like that before," Rice said.

Before Cindy hit, she heard stories of Rita and of what Holly Beach once looked like.

"They said it used to be a lot more stuff going on," Rice said.

"I don't think it will ever be what it used to be," Jinks said.

By the afternoon, most of the flooding had gone down. The main road that leads to Cameron was passable and the Cameron Parish County Office of Emergency Management said they weren't working any trouble spots.

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