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LEFT: John and Adele Potts found their 5-year-old boxer named Porsche 10 weeks after Hurricane Katrina hit, wandering the streets of New Orleans with a pack of dogs.
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By RUSTY DENNEN
Free Lance-Star photographer Rebecca Sell and reporter Rusty Dennen returned to the battered Gulf Coast this month where they caught up with four families they met two weeks after the hurricane. Here's how the storm victims are coping with their common bond of loss.
PICAYUNE, Miss.--Like thousands of Katrina kids, Morgan and Matthew Wood have covered a lot of ground.
A four-month odyssey took them on a plane and train from their home near a swamp in Slidell, La., to Spotsylvania County and back to their parents, James and Kristy.
For now, they're living with James' father in this rural Mississippi outpost. There are 13 people in the house, including other relatives left homeless by the storm.
Matthew, 6, is in his third school this year, and it has been hard on him, Kristy says.
"He understands a lot more than people give him credit for," she said.
Four-year-old Morgan, a preschooler and Shirley Temple look-alike, clings to her mom and her stuffed toy duck.
James, a roofing contractor, hurt his back and hasn't been able to work. Kristy has just completed courses in information technology and hopes to land a computer job. Meantime, she's working inspecting roofs for a contractor.
The Woods wisely evacuated to Texas to ride out the storm, knowing that it could wipe out their trailer near Pearl River.
They returned a few days later, with a generator, but found the neighborhood devastated and their trailer badly damaged.
Making matters worse, there was no electricity, no water, no stores open, no school.
So they sent the children to live with Kristy's sister, Nichole Gregory, and her family in Holleybrooke in Spotsylvania.
The children returned to Louisiana in mid-November.
"Things are getting a little better. We talked to FEMA and in two weeks we should have a trailer," Kristy said, to put on several of acres a friend is allowing them to use rent-free in Mississippi.
Eventually, they want to save up enough money to buy some land or build a home--far away from the coast.
They hope for better days, James said.
"There are still people living in tents out here. We're millionaires compared to them."
LACOMBE, La.--Adele and John Potts were heartbroken when Porsche, their 5-year-old boxer, disappeared after Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans on Aug. 29.
The Pottses had dropped off their beloved animal at a veterinary clinic and shelter before the storm and headed out of town.
They had expected to pick up the dog a day or two after the storm. But it turned into the beginning of a 10-week ordeal that ended happily when John Potts found a thinner, but healthy, Porsche 10 blocks away from where she was lost.
It seems that after the storm, someone had entered the boarding area as flooding spread across the city and let all the animals out.
The Pottses lost their home in New Orleans, their car and most of their belongings. Two weeks after the storm, Adele wandered the giant temporary animal shelter set up at the Lamar Dixon Exhibition Center in Gonzales, La., looking for Porsche. She was nowhere to be found among over 4,000 displaced dogs taken to the center.
They returned to the area around the vet's clinic several times--marveling that it was the only dry spot in that part of the flooded city.
And they got lucky.
"She was spotted on Sunday, Oct. 6. For two days, we drove around calling and whistling in the streets where a boxer was seen with other dogs," Adele said.
Weeks later, John spent an hour and a half at an intersection in the area, calling.
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About the series Only the Civil War displaced as many Americans as Hurricane Katrina. In a sense, the war and the hurricane’s aftermath are the same. The nation’s biggest natural disaster exposed the best and worst of humanity, and will define a generation. Though the storm played out mainly in Louisiana and Mississippi, it’s also a story about Fredericksburg—about how people here have been doing their part in the recovery and relief effort, supporting relatives in the stricken areas, and hosting strangers who have come seeking refuge. There are the victims—people of every race, creed and social class. There are heroes who rescued and comforted evacuees in their hour of need; helpers from volunteer agencies and churches taking time off from jobs, lives and families; those who dug deep into their pockets, and many who could only watch in horrified fascination from the sidelines. The storm left a monumental montage of sadness and human loss, looting, incredible inspiration, good intentions gone bad on the part of leaders of all political stripes, and above all, a guide for the future as Americans ponder nature’s power and how to blunt its destructive force. Free Lance–Star photographer Rebecca Sell and reporter Rusty Dennen spent a week in September covering the aftermath of the hurricane. They returned this month.
After Katrina Day 1: Lives in limbo Day 2: Volunteers answer the call Day 3: Rebuilding lives Day 4: Gone, not forgotten Day 5: A city divided
A look back |
"Two dogs came running across his headlights. One came toward him and froze and it was Porsche!" Adele said.
She looked ready to bolt, but John coaxed her into the car.
He surprised Adele when he arrived home at the couple's new place in Lacombe.
He laughed, "I told her I had something heavy in the car she needed to help me with."
"So Porsche jumps out," Adele recalled, "and I'm all crying all over again on the ground with her all smelly."
"When Johnny brought her in the house she had this deep, guttural growl. She's my new little buddy and my hero for hanging on until we could get to her," Adele said.
As for what else the hurricane claimed, "The rest is just stuff."
SLIDELL, La.--Laurie Jeansonne doesn't have much to do these days because her neighborhood is still paralyzed.
Sure, some of the debris has been hauled away, trees that had been draped over houses cut, and the electricity is back on.
But now her world has been shrunk to the size of a borrowed camper.
Jeansonne's one-story house is largely uninhabitable. So she and husband, Stephen, stay in the trailer parked in the drive.
To make it a little more like home, she's decorated it with Christmas lights.
For the foreseeable future, "this is where we live," she said. "It's hard."
She received $2,000 from FEMA and, like many other Louisianans, she's waiting for other relief funds to come through.
"At night I lay my head down in that bed and I shed many a tear," she said, holding her grandson, Julien. Her son Nathan had stopped by for a visit.
She won't soon forget the Virginians she met two weeks after Hurricane Katrina blew in and flattened and flooded her neighborhood.
They were Stafford County residents Julius and Cheryl George and their daughter who had pulled up in front of the battered home with a truckload of supplies.
It was one of those chance encounters; only God knows how it happened. The Georges, members of Mount Ararat Baptist Church in Garrisonville, had lived in New Orleans, felt the need to go after Katrina. They got a truck, loaded it up with diapers, water, food and other necessities and hit the road.
Jeansonne, 41, and her extended family were desperately in need of help and were running low on food and water--not to mention supplies for babies and toddlers.
Four months after the storm, she waits, and hopes.
Her dad has given her three-quarters of an acre nearby, where she and her husband, Stephen, plan to build a house at some point.
"It will probably take us a good year to clear the land, get septic in," she said.
The couple hope to receive about $40,000 toward the cost of rebuilding.
"That's great, but I can't go through another flood," she said. "Every time it rains, I'm pacing the floor."
For an occasional diversion, the couple head to Boomtown casino in New Orleans--not that they have any extra money to spend.
"Everyone is trying to get their lives back to what it used to be."
NEW ORLEANS--Allison Rubenstein is working again, though she didn't expect to be back at her family's clothing store.
Allison, 30, and her sister, Hilary, 31, had been looking to a good Christmas season at their own trendy women's fashion store on Magazine Street.
That's been delayed because their store, Ah-ha, was looted in the lawless days following Hurricane Katrina.
"I guess we were one of the lucky ones," Allison recalled recently on the floor of their parents' store, Rubenstein Brothers, on Canal Street. "At least they didn't break anything inside."
Two weeks after the storm, Allison managed to slip past the National Guard and police roadblocks to get a look at her shop. A Free Lance-Star photographer and reporter happened to be standing nearby and followed her in.
The sisters lost nearly $100,000 in inventory at Ah-ha.
They're not deterred.
"We went to market in October" to restock, Allison said. Merchandise should be arriving in January. "Then we reopen in February."
Floodwaters never reached her store on Magazine Street, though there was significant wind damage.
Water came up to the door of Rubensteins, in the family for three generations. It was one of the first large retail businesses to reopen downtown.
Though traffic is not anything as it used to be, there are plenty of cars on Canal Street and in the French Quarter. People are shopping.
"Business is better than we had expected," Allison said.
"I just went to an insurance adjuster this morning," she added. "It looked so horrible" weeks ago when she first stopped by. "But I guess we're putting things in perspective."
For one thing, Hilary is pregnant, which is a reason to be hopeful.
To reach RUSTY DENNEN:
Email: rdennen@freelancestar.com
