The waters in the Palm Lake subdivision have receded, but as Rod Piper looked at the appliances and furniture sitting in his driveway Thursday afternoon, he knew his work was just beginning.

The Piper house is one of 88 houses that took water after Hurricane Gustav’s storm surge pushed Palm Lake waters into the subdivision Monday night. The Pipers got about a foot of water that stayed in the house for 36 hours.

The irony for Piper is he had just bought the house, and he was in the process of renovating, so the living quarters were on the second floor.

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“If the storm had just waited six more months, we would have been prepared,” Piper said as he looked at his household furnishing drying in his driveway. “But we will be ready next time.”

Even more ironic is the Piper family had made it through Hurricane Katrina unscathed three years ago. At the time Piper lived on the West Bank in New Orleans. Then he decided to move to Slidell and bought a house in Palm Lake, despite warnings from friends that the area floods even during heavy rains.

“I thought it wouldn’t have been that bad,” Piper said.

But Piper, like other flooded families in the subdivision, were busy Thursday tearing out wet carpet and taking stock of furnishings that got wet. While they were hard at work cleaning up the mess, a U.S. Postal Service truck was stopping at mailboxes delivering the mail.

Piper’s biggest problem will be paying for the cost of the damage.

While he was renovating his house, he had builders insurance.

“I’m not 100 percent sure that it will cover everything,” Piper said. “We lost furniture, appliances and the lawn mower. It’s tough.”

The scene was similar on Camellia Drive, which runs parallel to Palm Lakes. The street was covered with flood debris, trees were uprooted and piles of wet carpet and mattresses lined the sidewalks.

Camellia Drive residents were a little luckier than Palm Lake. Only 22 houses took water after the hurricane, but for those that flooded that was little comfort.

The Valladares family had evacuated to Mississippi, and when they came back they found about 4 inches of water in their neat brick bungalow. For Richard Valladares this is nothing new. Three years ago, his house in Kingspoint took 4 feet of water after Katrina, and he moved his family to Camellia Drive.

When he opened the door to his house Thursday morning, memories of Katrina were on his mind.

“Even though we had power, the air conditioning system had flooded, so it was very hot,” Valladares recalled. “It felt like Katrina because of the smell.”

His mother, Glenys, and sister, Nina, spent the day pulling up wet carpet and putting clothes, chairs and musical equipment up out of harm’s way.

Valladares is a music producer and lost a couple of keyboards to the flood water. While Valladares was ruminating on the damage, an American Red Cross truck stopped in front of his house.

Red Cross volunteers Liz Hungerford and David Cory opened the back door of the truck and asked if anyone in the neighborhood needed food and water.

Pretty soon, a crowd of residents surrounded the truck and took cartons of food and water.

Hungerford and Cory said they had been running hurricane shelters in Mississippi. When the shelters closed they headed south, handing out supplies on their way to New Orleans to set up another shelter.

“We went to the police station here, and they told us about the flooding in Palm Lake and Camellia, and here we are,” Hungerford said.

Glenys Valladares was so happy for the supplies that she took a picture of the Red Cross truck with her cell phone.

“I’m feeling OK about it now,” Glenys said. “It’s only wet carpet, and we are getting a new air conditioner. This is nothing compared to Katrina.”

Though he has flood insurance, which will cover the flood damage, Richard Valladares is not as optimistic as his mother.

“If it floods again, I don’t know if I will stay,” he said.