By Brittany Dillard,
Katrina Evacuee,
Shoes, check. Uniform, check. School supplies, check. Book sack, check. A storm that felt like the end all and be all … no comment.
One thing almost every grade school student had in common that fourth week in August of 2005 was that we were planning our second week of school, being kids and having fun. No one expected to run. No one knew nor expected what was coming.
“Last week I wore these shoes, so next week, I’m going to hop out with these shoes.” I laid them out that Friday night with care. As a 14 year old High School Freshman, fashions were on my mind. Books weren’t important until that first threat of a test. Friday, I was planning my outfit and Saturday I was saying goodbye.
“Stop. Step back and look at the house because it might be the last time you see it as it is,” said Gwen Sanford, my mom.
That woke me up. I looked down at my suitcase in my hand, Big eyed with shock, but then I brushed off the alarming feeling. “ We’ll be back, we always do,” I reassured myself. I looked at my brother who was two years younger than me. He seemed to be thinking the same thing.
“For me it wasn’t a big deal. I was thinking we were about to go to Mississippi and cool out and then return home like we always did. It was just like the yearly vacation to our cousin’s house,” Silas Sanford said. Sanford, 33 from Marrero ‘The Westbank of New Orleans’ was 12 years old at the time.
We pulled out of the neighborhood, merged onto LAPALCO Blvd, then the Westbank Expressway, then the Crescent City Connection bridge, which at the time was named the Greater New Orleans bridge. I believe we all took for granted the feeling of a smooth traffic flow until we hit the mighty traffic jam of thousands of other evacuees, which caused us to inch across the bridge for almost the entire duration of the trip. A trip that usually takes three and a half hours, took us a tedious 11 hours. We left our home August 28th at 10 AM and arrived in Jackson, MS at 11 PM.
For hours, when the traffic wasn’t at a standstill, we were going 5 to 10 miles per hour. No birds were in the sky, no wind was blowing, no tree limbs swaying. There was only stillness in the air. We were watching the weather change. We were watching the water beat up against the bridge. As night was falling and the city was inching away, there was seriousness in the air. A very pronounced quiet. In those hours, The Big Easy didn’t feel like the Big Easy anymore.
We were detoured. The usual route we took out of the city was closed, so we didn’t know where we were going, we just followed the flow of traffic. All we knew when we got to the state of Mississippi was that we were on Highway 49. We were anxious, worried and more than anything, exhausted.
Amongst those thousands of evacuees was Christian Favorite, a teen from the Eastbank. We, unknowingly, would later meet in Richland, MS. Favorite and his family, like us, had no idea where they were headed. Their usual route to MS was closed and they too had to take a detour. We were all traveling MS HWY 49.
“I most definitely felt like it was going to be a turn around trip; like it was just an extended weekend. I don’t think anyone thought it would be life altering.” said Favorite. Favorite, 37 is from The Upper 9th Ward. He was 17 years old at the time. “I took a weekend bag. I told my brother ‘It’s not like we not coming back.’ I fully expected to go back home.”
Not everyone evacuated. 16 year old Sonnisha Amos from the 7th ward and her family waited out the storm at Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans.
“For every hurricane we would get a hotel because our house and our grandmother’s house sat high off the ground. We just thought it would be a normal little bad weather situation like it normally was when officials said ‘hurricane’, said Amos, now 36. Amos had a grand view of the happenings on the street below her during and after the destruction of the storm. “Before the storm hit, I saw people packing, evacuating; after the storm I saw people looting for fun but also for things they needed. They didn’t have power. They didn’t have food. People were doing any and everything to survive. It also made me think about my classmates that couldn’t evacuate.”
Amos says one of the most important things she felt was safety. “ I was with family and we were in a safe environment. They provided us with food and they provided my mom with milk and formula for my baby sister. I felt safe and secure.”
As soon as we received clearance to re-enter the city of New Orleans, that’s exactly what we did. We went home. We went to see if this nightmare flooding the news was real or if it was all just a bad dream. A bad joke. The city looked as if it hadn’t had any sun for months. Certain streets were closed because of blocked roads from death and devastation. The scenes were horrific. Homes were completely uprooted or demolished, cars and boats were in trees. In our neighborhood, most houses were still standing but were ruined by flood water. Ours was one of them. The neighborhood looked defeated.
“Our neighborhood had a type of ‘life’ to it. You had certain people you saw every day, people at the corner store, the types of cars going up and down the street… but..from what I can remember when we returned, it felt..dead,” said Sanford. “You come back to your neighborhood thinking it’s going to be the same way you left, (people walking up and down the street, cars) but it was really lifeless and gloomy.”
Our house depicted that picture as well, fitting in like a piece of the neighborhood puzzle. It looked like it was just a frame, a bookmark, holding a spot for something that once was but now no more.
“It looked like our house… but lifeless.” she said. We were amongst thousands of New Orleanians trying to pick up the pieces. Heartbroken and heavy and amazed because although devastating, it was captivating. We had never seen sights like this before and we knew this was a mark in history. And we were the lucky ones. We were still breathing.
“Entering the city you saw the code markings on the houses, cars turned over, debris, just dissarray,” recalls, Favorite. “ You saw people trying to salvage. Our house was there but there were code markings on it. “What stood out to me was the mold line. It was there…just chillin. The water rose to probably 6’8 on the wall.”
There wasn’t much Favorite and his family could salvage, but there were 3 interesting pairs of survivors that Christian found. “I had just gotten hired at 6 Flags and with my first check I bought 3 pair of shoes. Before the storm I left my shoes on my bed. When I went back home my mattress and my 3 pair of shoes had floated to another room but they were still there. Untouched in their boxes..They had survived.” Favorite’s family was able to rebuild their home. His mother still lives there today.
We spent 3 months going back home trying to salvage what we could. We were blessed. Some people had nothing after the storm, while we were able to continuously salvage something almost every week. We could take a part of home back to Mississippi with us. We were saving items and items were saving us.
“ It was therapeutic to go home,” my mom said. “ We left some things in the house on purpose. We had the mindset that ‘ If I didn’t get everything, if I left something there, we’d still have something at home.” After months, mold took over the home and we were no longer able to salvage anything. But we had so much and even more to be thankful for.
However, one factor lingered in our minds; the mental toll Katrina had on us for weeks, months and even years. Ok, so we’re never going back. And it took me a while to understand, I was like, wait, so, we’re never going back? Are we going to wait a while to fix up everything or what? But no, we were never going back to live there. Never see the house again. Never hear from some of my friends. It was like life flipped in one night.” Life did flip in one night.
Favorite recalls the day before evacuating the storm as a sunny, chill day with his brothers and sister, playing on the playstation and playing spades. Amos reflects on the week before and how she was just a normal teen, excited about a new school year, going to block parties and catching the RTA bus with friends from one event to the other. Sanford remembers chilling with neighborhood friends, the girlfriend he had just made and getting the shoes he really wanted, a crispy white pair of Nike Air Force Ones, which, in New Orleans are referred to as ‘G-Nikes’. And I recall my last visit to my favorite mall, pausing at the Cafe Du Monde, eating an order of Beignets in the food court.
We were enjoying our youth, making our plans heedlessly through our innocence, and the weather was making its own. If we would have known, doubtlessly, that we would have caught our final bead at Mardi Gras, our final Second Line Sunday, last walk along the River Walk, heard our last drum or horn on Bourbon Streel, took our last stroll on Canal, spent our last dollar at the Jackson Square as New Orleans residents, we would have slowed our step, looked at the sky, breathed in the air and taken it all in.
“I kinda took New Orleans for granted,” said Favorite. “I wondered why people made a big fuss and ‘broke their necks’ to get here. Because you know everything that happens in New Orleans is normal to us. But then you realize, there’s no other place like New Orleans. New Orleans is actually super magical. You realize that what’s normal to us is magical to other people. Then you become one of those people on the outside looking in and you’re like, ‘dang, that’s a one of a kind type of place.” What we couldn’t quite comprehend as children, but has, overtime, through closure, healing and prayer, became clear to us as adults.
Part 2 of this story will appear in next week’s edition.
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