Surviving Katrina

On Sunday, August 28, 2005, I was awakened at 7:00 a.m. by the phone. It was my sister, Tracy. She knew that Eddie and I had planned on riding out Hurricane Katrina, not in our mobile home, but at my parents' home, which was brick and had an upper level. We'd been through hurricanes and tropical storms before. T.S. Cindy had blown through St. Bernard Parish a month earlier. It was part of life in Southeast Louisiana.

"It's a Catagory 5!" Tracy told me. I sat up in bed and said, "Oh, my God! I'll call you back!"
I shook Eddie, and said, "It's a Cat 5! We gotta GO!"

Eddie jumped up when he heard that Hurricane Katrina, a Cat 3 storm when we went to bed the night before, had flared up to a 5 overnight. We decided to pack up and leave. The problem was, I was to hole up at my mother's house, so I had told her the day before just to pack and leave, I'd pick things up off the floor for her and secure the yard when I got there. Now, before I could secure my own home, I had to go to her home to secure it as I had promised.

I went to the house at 2821 Plaza Drive and began to transfer things from the ground floor to the upper level: her doll collection, her computer, her nice dresses from the downstairs closet; anything I could think of. She had left her two parakeets there, too. I overfilled their food, gave them fresh water, and brought them upstairs, hoping we'd be back in a couple of days. We expected the lower level to flood: it had flooded several times before during spring rains. But we never expected the water to reach the upper level. I dragged her heavy potted plants in as close to the house as I could, secured whatever I could, and went back inside. Something came over me. I had a bad feeling. I went upstairs and shut all the doors, in case water came rushing in. I thought the doors would slow the water intrusion long enough for it to begin receding before it reached the top of the beds.

I called my brother in law, Clayton, who NEVER evacuated. Period. He didn't pick up the phone. I left a message: "Clayton, if you insist on staying, please come here to mom's house. It's higher than your house and you'll be safer. I'll leave a key in the shoe." I was referring to the wooden shoe on a window ledge where mom left her keys for us when she wasn't home. Her home was always open to us, no matter what. I called my niece, Shannon, and told her that she and her husband, Josh, should go to Mississippi, to Tracy's summer home, with us. She said it would be too crowded over there. I told her, "Well, you can't stay, Shannon! Get in the car and just head north and west, and don't stop until you're far enough away to be safe." I called Tracy and told her we would come to her house to ride out the storm. We knew we would get the winds, but at least, where she was, we wouldn't get any floodwaters.

Eddie had gone to gas up the truck and get ice. When I got back home, he took the car to get gas. He said that there was only one place still open, and the guy was price gouging, but what could we do? He told me to pack him one change of clothes, we'd only be gone a day. But that's not what my heart told me. I packed two suitcases and two backpacks with as many clothes and toiletries as I could fit. I jammed boxes of photo albums, the research I had done on my family history, and computer backup disks into my car. What I couldn't fit, I wrapped in plastic bags and secured with duct tape, placing it as high as I could. This included a large box of family photos that just wouldn't fit into the car. I looked for my journals, which I had been writing since I was a teenager. I couldn't find them anywhere. By this time, Eddie had come back, and it was time to go. It was 2:30 in the afternoon.

I took CoCo, our cat, in the old Cadillac with me. Eddie took Chanel, our 12 and a half year old Chinese Shar-Pei, in the '69 Ford truck with him. We flew out of town....until we hit I-10. It took us 6 hours to make what would normally be a 45 minute trip. It was almost dark when we arrived. We enjoyed the airconditioning after our hot ride, and we decided to make it an early night. The winds had already picked up, and I knew they'd be waking me up early.

I woke up at 5:30 a.m. to the sound of the wind. I went downstairs to make coffee, trying not to wake anyone up. Eddie and my brother in law, Rene, woke up and joined me in a cup of coffee. By the time I got up to start a second pot of coffee, the electricity went out. I took a flashlight upstairs to the room where my step-dad was, so that he could see when he woke up. He asked me what I was doing. "The lights are out already. I brought you a flashlight."

Eventually, the noise of the wind woke the whole household up: Tracy had invited her neighbor from St. Bernard Parish and his family to stay there, too. There were times when it sounded like the wind was tearing the house apart. The noise was unbearably loud. At other times, the guys would go out to the porch facing away from the direction of the wind, and just watch things blowing by. Then, the pine trees started uprooting and falling over.

My sister had 21 pine trees on her property. The first one to go just fell over into her garden. The second one clipped the front of Eddie's truck, knocking out the headlight. By the time they stopped falling, every one of our vehicles was damaged. A large tree fell on the roof in the back of the house, crushing the kitchen door frame and cracking the ceiling. Another fell by the front door, where the guys had stupidly been standing, and almost hit them. There was only one small, skinny pine tree left standing when the wind finally stopped.

Mike and his family left the next day. He didn't know where he was going, but he insisted on going. We had no idea what bridges were out, and there was no news on the radio about St. Bernard Parish. We didn't know if Clayton and our other friends and relatives, who had refused to leave, were dead or alive. We didn't know if Shannon and Josh had found safety. We didn't know where the rest of our family had evacuated to. The phone lines were down, and so were the towers, so our cell phones didn't work. The men had to cut through the sea of pine trees just so that we could get to the street to see what the neighborhood looked like.

The heat was unbearable. The water was shut off. The men had to go to the lake to gather water in garbage cans and buckets so that we could flush the toilets. We had no ice. They worked on Rene's old generator, and finally got it working. We would use it for a few hours at a time, just to keep the food in the refrigerator from going bad. He hooked up a fan, but it didn't help. The dogs and cat were as miserable as we were. We rationed our water, but the food was largely uneaten. None of us had an appetite. We were so dehydrated that we couldn't sweat any more, and barely urinated.

One night, at about 3:00 a.m., my stepdad came in from his bed on the porch and said, "The phone is on! Wake up! The phone is on!!" His phone had picked up a signal. We all turned our phones on, and sure enough, we had a signal. But we still couldn't get a call out. We were able to retrieve our messages...they were heartwrenching pleas from our family to call them. They needed to know if we had survived. I had several messages from my "wife-in-law" Marquette. She was my second husband's second wife, the mother of my step children. She left as many messages as my mom did! She and I had formed a friendship while I was married to Jerry. We did it for the welfare of the children, but found that we really liked each other, and our friendship has lasted though the kids are grown and my marriage ended. She and my brother in Oregon were the only two people we could reach by phone. Then Tracy tried a text message. She sent a message to Shannon, telling her we're alive, and asking if she is okay. She recieved a reply: "Thank God!"

That was one of the happiest moments of my life. Re-connecting with my family lifted my spirits, lifted all of our spirits, and gave us renewed strength and courage. Eddie and I stayed for eight days in Mississippi, and then left in our broken cars to meet up with the rest of our family. They had found shelter at the Jimmie Davis State Park in northern Louisiana, and they said that we could stay there free. We made it there on a wing and a prayer, but we made it there. When I saw their faces, well, there are really no words to describe how I felt. I will never forget the feeling, nor will I ever take my family for granted. When I saw Clayton's face, I thought my heart would burst with joy. He had spent 3 days on his rooftop before he was rescued. He had experienced hell, but he couldn't yet talk about it. That was okay. I was happy just to talk about the weather with him.

We stayed in Jackson Parish for several months, and made the decision to return to St. Bernard Parish. We wanted to be a part of the clean up and rebuilding. The rest of my family, except for my mom's sister Joyce and her family, have moved to higher ground. The closeness of family, the friendly community that I had loved so much, are gone. Things are going slowly here, but that's another blog. I'll just say this: I survived Katrina just to drown in bullshit. But, things will get better, right? They have to get better.