Less than 24 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit land, my wife and I started packing up the car to leave St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana. We only had an hour to get the brakes fixed before we had to leave. We had to rely on the kindness of a neighbour who was working quickly on the car while we packed it with the things the officials told us to take.
We put some clothes, important papers, and our dog, Patches, in the car. We went to get an older man whose daughter couldn't get him because she lived north of Lake Ponchartrain, which was nearly impassable at that point. He went to our church, and because he could barely walk on his own, we picked him up for every service. We know now that he would not be alive if we hadn't gone to his house to get him out of there.
We drove all night long. At first, we couldn't go faster than 15 miles per hour on the twin spans, which were part of an 8-mile-long bridge across the lake. That bridge is mostly gone today. A few hours later, the winds came from behind us and blew the bridges into the water like toothpicks in a bathtub. Over time, we got up to about fifty, but we never went faster than that. We stayed for two days at a friend's house near Birmingham, Alabama. We got in touch with the old man's family and made plans for them to come get him. During the second night, when the winds were strong and Old Birmingham was in danger, the power went out several times.
We started the 450-mile trip to my wife's sister's house in West Baton Rouge Parish on the third day, just hours after Katrina had passed over Jackson, Mississippi. We listened to the radio reports with some hope that things might not be as bad as they seemed. As news came in every hour about broken levees and rising water, our hearts began to sink.
Over the next two weeks, we watched all the news and looked on the internet for pictures and friends from our neighbourhood. During the first week, you couldn't make a call to any place from Alabama to East Texas. We didn't know anything about anyone or anything we had ever known. It was a long, dark time.
Slowly, news started coming in, but none of it was good. We saw photos of our neighbourhood with water up to the roofs. We slowly heard from people we knew who were hiding out in different parts of the country. Some of them swore they'd never come back.
Next, we heard about and saw pictures of toxic mud all over our Parish. We also heard that houses had to be bulldozed down because they were too dangerous to live in. People, animals, and bodies were still being saved, and Baton Rouge TV stations showed pictures of all of this every day. Even though things were already bad, we started trying to call FEMA and the Red Cross.
My wife must have called FEMA more than 500 times before she was able to get through. Then, after they took our information, they said they would send us a package in the mail. We still haven't reached the Red Cross, and they're still talking about getting 40,000 volunteers to help answer the phones. The insurance company that covered our house told us that they would only cover our house and nothing else, but they aren't sure what they can do until they see it. But no one, not even us, can see our house. Last night, the president of St. Bernard Parish, Junior Rodrigues, held a news conference in this city's capitol building. He said that it would be months, not weeks, before people could go back home. Just a few hours before we heard this bad news, we went to get shots to protect us from a number of diseases we could get when we go back.
Our bank accounts were locked, and even in this rich Mississippi Valley, money doesn't grow on trees, so I thought I'd make a plea on my own one-page website. Now, we feel stuck between people's warnings about fake sites collecting money for the Red Cross and other organisations and their lack of interest. So far, no one has answered the call, but only 35 or 40 people a day visit my website.
My wife helped feed about 200 people in a shelter here for free. She helped make and serve the food. A small Baptist church in Erwinville, Louisiana, paid for the food. Later, we went to see the people in the shelter, and we still do that when we're not banging our heads against the wall because of the worst phone problem in history. We asked one family if there was anything we could get for them at the shelter. They asked for a Bible. The next day, we bought it and gave it to them in person. Not the Bible itself, but the fact that they asked for it, warmed our hearts a lot. Unlike the stories that come out of the Superdome, this was a great family of black Americans with different values. And thousands of people just like them are hurting and waiting to start over, just like we are.
We've been asked to stay with family and friends in other cities and states, but we're staying close to New Orleans to try to get a look around and get what we can. So far, all we've heard from aid groups is "Stay away" and the busy signal buzzing over and over again.
We're a praying couple, and when we talk to Jesus, we're sure he tells us, "I love you, and I'll take care of everything." We believe Him, and we're glad his phone line wasn't busy.
