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Katrina survivors have stories to tell-of the harrowing storm, of compassionate friends and strangers, of their struggles to adjust to a life disrupted.
Below, select from the stories of just four of some 250,000 people—nearly a quarter of those displaced by the storm—who were evacuated to Houston from areas across the Gulf Coast. A year later, as many as 150,000 remained in Houston, unable to return to New Orleans neighborhoods that had vanished or not yet been rebuilt.
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 Charles Darensbourg was born in 1931 and worked as a welder, craftsman, and postman before retiring. He married Jacquelyn Grandpre in 1951. They had lived happily for 50 years in the home of their dreams in Pontchartrain Park, New Orleans's first black subdivision, when Katrina forced them to evacuate. Their house and neighborhood destroyed, they relocated to the Houston, Texas area.
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 Linda Jeffers, born in 1949, lived in New Orleans for 35 years and worked for decades as an entrepreneur and community organizer before Hurricane Katrina. After being trapped in the flooded city, Linda evacuated to Houston's Astrodome and immediately began working with the Metropolitan Organization to organize fellow survivors to affect government response to their housing, utility, and medical needs. She continues her Katrina advocacy work with AmericaSpeaks and other groups in the Houston area—and, since late 2007, in Louisiana as well.
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 Vincent Trotter, born in New Orleans in 1973, is a saxophonist with a life-long love of the city’s music. Like his father before him, Vincent worked as a guard in the Orleans Parish Prison, and he was on duty when Katrina struck. After guarding the prisoners on a bridge surrounded by floodwater, he made his way to Houston, where he lived for two years before returning to New Orleans in 2007.
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 Debra Brown, born in New Orleans in 1953, worked for the Federal Government for 25 years before Katrina. Trapped in the city with her extended family—including sons Josef and Cedric, pictured here—she eventually reached shelter in the Superdome before being evacuated to Houston. In Houston, she worked with neighborhood centers to marshall aid for fellow Katrina survivors. In 2007 and 2008 she moved back and forth between Houston and New Orleans. |
These stories were told by survivors, to survivors, as part of the “Surviving Katrina and Rita in Houston” project. The project’s goal is to voice the experiences and reflections of those displaced to Houston by the two major hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast in August and September of 2005. For more information, visit www.KatrinaAndRita.org.
Continue to Hurricanes and Climate Change. >>
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