Close to 97 percent of homes and businesses in Livingston, a town of about 1,000 people, were without power, and volunteer workers from Boone Electric Company said it would take weeks to fix the damage. In the blink of an eye Hurricane Gustav left it's mark, etched in the land and wading in the water.

Everything stands still. Families bond together as they search for a clearer picture of reality and find direction on how to move on with their lives.

"It's been bad. There's just a lot of people without electricity without water gas you can't go to the stores they have no electricity," resident James Martin said. "Food is on the shortage. The people in this area are in a bind."

Boone Electric's first stop was at the home of James Martin. Martin lives in Livingston, Louisiana and owns land in Missouri. His yard was barely scratched.

But his dirt road leads to disaster, tucked away directly across the street.

"It was very hard," resident Karla Locke said. "There are a lot of memories - 30 something years here. Of my children, of my mom, it just goes through families."

Last Monday, Locke's aunt called her with the news that a piece of family history demolished her home.

"She said it's really bad," Locke said. "The red oak that's probably 70 years old, my mom and I figured because my grandfather planted this tree, went down and just totaled the whole house. The whole everything is pretty much gone."

The roof of the home was close to caving in and the only thing holding the house up was half of the ceiling and tree branches. A ventilation system is down, lamps are on the floor and the floor itself is really just pieces of insulation and wood. Luckily, no one was inside the home when the storm hit.

"Everything has been drug everywhere so it's just chaos," Locke said.

Boone Electric Company came to answer the call. It's a story of unity, of a nation coming together to help one another in a time of need.

"We gon' make it," said Martin.