An airboat driver rescues residents in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, where the ‘Cajun Navy’ of volunteers aided relief efforts.

After eight years of helping disasters around Louisiana and abroad, founders of the Cajun Navy Rob and Camille Gaudet said the organization is undergoing a branding change in order to provide even more disaster assistance to those needing immediate aid.

Speaking at the New Iberia Kiwanis Club Thursday, the Gaudets recounted their journey of founding the Cajun Navy and where it has taken the group from its humble roots in the flood of 2016 to coordinating aid in places like Maui.

“People around the world have heard of the Cajun Navy and it could only happen in a place like this,” Rob Gaudet said. “This could not happen in California or the Midwest. I think we have a sense of camaraderie in Louisiana that is unique.”

One of the missions of the Cajun Navy is to organize that camaraderie into useful aid during disaster events like hurricanes, and showing other communities how they can do the same in their area.

Gaudet said he remembered seeing thousands of boats in 2016 that were being turned away by law enforcement authorities. After working in software engineering for more than 30 years, Gaudet said he applied his skills of coordination and talked to law enforcement about how volunteers could help with the disaster.

“Really what they wanted was to put a deputy in every boat,” he said. “We took a step back and tried to figure out how to engage with the authorities and it ended up helping a lot of people.”

Gaudet said there has never been enough volunteers in any disaster the Cajun Navy has helped, and after eight years the needs of the organization don’t seem to be going away anytime soon.

One of Gaudet’s biggest concerns is the aging baby boomer population that has left many elderly without the proper resources during a hurricane or flooding event. When your network of resources is the biggest factor in how successful disaster recovery is going to be, Gaudet said many elderly are increasingly alone and unable to conduct proper disaster recovery efforts.

“Our aging citizens are getting zero help,” he said.

Despite having a name that has become known to many outside of Louisiana, the Gaudets said the services of the Cajun Navy can still get bigger. The new name, Ground Force Humanitarian Aid, is a reflection of that wider effort. 

It didn’t come easy for us to step away from that brand, but it came for us to do it out of necessity because we’ve become a national brand,” Camille Gaudet said.