United Cajun Navy needs volunteers in Louisiana

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – The United Cajun Navy is in need of volunteers while some of their crew members are still assisting those in other states who were devastated by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Their new 26,000 square foot facility filled up with donations in just three days. This is the third warehouse the United Cajun Navy has in the area.

At first glance, it may look like a warehouse full of stuff, but that stuff is a lifeline for people hundreds of miles away. Brian Trascher is the Vice President of the United Cajun Navy. He says hundreds, if not thousands of people are still in need of help.

“They’re still pulling people out of the mud. I mean they are still finding people that have basically just sort of set up tents ‘cause they haven’t had any human contact in a few weeks and they’re just surviving on what they can,” Trascher says. We need volunteers to help us sort, pack, wrap, and help us load trucks to get it back out.”

Trascher has been with the United Cajun Navy since 2018. He says he has seen it grow from primarily a search and rescue operation to a permanent logistics operation able to quickly help with disaster relief. Trascher says they are more than willing to help strangers states away because they’ve seen lives in Louisiana uprooted by mother nature.

“Think about just losing everything, your house, your clothes, all your memories, everything like that and so they have to start over, and you know our job is to get in there until fema and other government agencies are able to ramp up and get their programs in place,” Trascher says. “We know very well it could happen to us any given year. It happened to them.”

Trascher says it’s hard to believe how far the United Cajun Navy has come since the days of its conception, but says it’s also just a microcosm of what is to come in the future.

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